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The Jews in Vienna: A Troubled History, and a Warning for Today (PART TWO)

A vandalized Jewish cemetery in Vienna, Austria, in October 2023. Photo: Screenshot

To read part one of this article, click here.

The Golden Age of Jewish Vienna

In 1848, under the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph, Jews were granted limited civil rights. In 1852, the Jewish community was permitted to establish a legally recognized community, albeit with a temporary status. Finally, in 1867, the Constitutional law created complete equality for all citizens of Austria, including Jews. With their official acceptance and legal recognition as a community, Jews from the Eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, particularly Galicia, Czech, and Hungary, immigrated to Austria.

After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Jewish refugees from Eastern war regions escaped to Vienna in large numbers. For the first time, thousands of Hassidic Jews and their rebbes moved to Vienna, joining the Oberlander Vien followers of the Chasam Sofer. They assumed they would reside in Vienna’s relative tranquility until the war ended.

Yet, Vienna unexpectedly became a thriving center of Hasidism over those few years. By the time the war ended, the refugees realized Vienna was a far better option than their destroyed hometowns. They began to settle and rebuild their communities in Vienna.

Following World War I, by 1923, the percentage of Jews in Vienna reached its peak at 10.8 percent of the population, making Vienna the third-largest Jewish community in Europe.

Due to its prominent rabbinic residents and community, Vienna would go on to host the first two Knessiah Gedolahs (The Great Congress) of the International Agudath Israel in 1923 and 1929.

Enlightenment Movement In Vienna

During its Golden Age, Vienna also became a center of the “Enlightenment Movement,” which promoted the move toward secularism and decreased Jewish education. Between 1848 and 1938, secular Austrian Jews were prominent in Vienna’s intellectual, cultural, and political life. However, unlike the earlier affluent and influential Viennese Jews, who were very observant, many prominent Jews of this era assimilated or even converted to Christianity.

Assimilated Jews contributed to Vienna’s cultural and scientific achievements. Prominent Jewish physicians and psychologists, including Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Victor Frankl, resided and taught there. Jews were active in music and theater, including Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schonberg, Oscar Straus, Emmerich Kalman, Max Reinhardt, Fritz Kortner, Lily Darvas, and Elisabeth Berner. Writers Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, and Felix Salten became world-renowned for their works.

Theodor Herzl, founder of secular political Zionism, lived and died in Vienna. Many Jews were leaders of the Social Democratic Party. Victor Adler and Otto Bauer, who served as Austrian foreign ministers after World War I, were both Jews.

In the field of medicine, three out of four Austrian Nobel Prize winners in medicine at the time were Jewish. More than half of Austria’s physicians and dentists were Jews, as were more than 60 percent of the lawyers and a substantial number of university teachers.

Yet, despite their success and fame, antisemitism remained a constant in the environment of Austria. As Rabbi Berel Wein, a noted Jewish historian, observed, “Austria was always known for its antisemitism.” And this hatred of Jews would soon rear its ugly head in the most vicious way imaginable.

Two Infamous Antisemites

While Jews were focused on integrating and excelling within Viennese society, a renewal of antisemitism developed. This time it wasn’t religious antisemitism that targeted the Jews for not becoming Christians; it was racial antisemitism, which applied to all Jews, whether their religion mattered to them or not.

Two particularly influential antisemites were Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Karl Lueger.

Georg Ritter von Schönerer was a politician who innovated ideas that Hitler would adopt, such as expelling Jews from his movement, adopting the title Fuehrer and the greeting of Heil. He told his followers that a battle would take place between the Germans and the Jews and that “if we don’t expel the Jews, we Germans will be expelled!” He was jailed after ransacking the office of a Jewish newspaper and attacking their employees. Yet, after his release, he continued to successfully build his Pan-German movement. Twenty-one members of the antisemitic nationalist party, Alldeutsch Parti, were elected to the Austrian Parliament.

Another rabid, influential Austrian antisemite, Karl Lueger, was elected mayor of Vienna five times between 1897 and 1910. At first, Emperor Franz Joseph refused to support him due to his antisemitism, but after Lueger’s fifth reelection, he accepted Lueger’s power. (As an aside, his political success is another indication of how acceptable antisemitism was in Austria.) Lueger blamed the Jews for Vienna’s financial problems and roused crowds with his antisemitic fervor. Interestingly, in private, he still had several Jewish friends. Lueger is said to have responded to questions about this contradiction with the statement, “I decide who is a Jew,” a comment that fits well with Vienna’s overall approach to its Jews historically.

Lueger’s ideas strongly influenced Adolf Hitler, who moved to Vienna in 1906. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler refers to Lueger as one of the personalities who shaped his views about Jews, as well as von Schönerer as discussed above.

The Anschluss

On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria, and Nazi Germany annexed Austria in an event that became known as the Anschluss. That same night, Jewish stores and apartments were pillaged, and Jews were chased into the streets and humiliated, forced to scrub sidewalks, to the cheers of the Austrian observers. Almost immediately, the Nazis carried out the first deportations to Dachau of Jews. This overnight turnaround from successful integrated citizens to a hunted and degraded people, was a complete shock to Austrian Jewry.

By May, the Nuremberg Racial Laws were applied in occupied Austria. Within a short period, the Jews — who, as discussed above, were so prominent and influential in Austria, both politically and professionally — lost their civil liberties. They were expelled from universities, excluded from public service and most professions, and were forced to wear a yellow star. Other decrees followed, banning Jews from public parks, closing Jewish stores, and requiring Jews to take on a first name of Sara or Israel.

All Jewish organizations and institutions were shut down. However, afterward, some organizations were re-opened when the Nazis forced emigration, and the Jewish organizations were to coordinate that. Adolf Eichmann worked closely with Vienna’s Security Police to establish the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, which he sadistically established in the “Aryanized” Palais Albert Rothschild in Vienna, which they had confiscated from Louis Van Rothshild.

By May 17, 1939, nearly 130,000 Jews left Austria under the forced emigration policy. Most of the Jews’ assets were “legally” taken by the Germans through various taxes and exit permit requirements. When Jews tried to emigrate to Switzerland, the Swiss responded by asking Germany to mark the passports with a J, for Jew, so they would know who to refuse. Austrian Jews went wherever they could — to England, France, Czechoslovakia, America, Shanghai, Africa, Australia, and Argentina.

During the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, the city’s synagogues were burned down, and 4,000 Jewish stores and businesses were vandalized and ransacked. The only synagogue that remained was the central synagogue, which had been hidden from street view due to the law. Perhaps this was also so the fire wouldn’t spread to the nearby Hotel Metropol, which was the headquarters for the Nazi party. During Kristallnacht, over 6,500 Austrian Jews were deported to Dachau and Buchenwald.

Beginning in October 1941, 35,000 Viennese Jews were deported to the ghettos of Minsk, Riga, and Lodz, as well as Theresienstadt and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. By the end of 1942, only 8,102 Jews remained in the city. These Jews were eventually taken to the largest concentration camp in Austria, Mauthausen.

Before the war, there were approximately 190,000 Jews in Austria. Only 5,816 lived to see the liberation of Austria, and 65,459 Austrian Jews were murdered. This was a smaller percentage than in other countries because the Austrian Jews were initially forced to emigrate.

Compared to other countries, there were very few Austrians who tried to save Jews. Yad Vashem lists Righteous Among the Nations who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Austria ranks 18th, with only 113 individuals listed. Even more telling, Simon Wiesenthal — who lived in Vienna after the war — is quoted as having said, “Only eight percent of the population of the Third Reich were Austrians. [However] Austrians were responsible for half of the murder of Jews perpetrated under Nazi rule.”

Jewish Life in Vienna After the Holocaust

In April 1945, the Vienna Jewish Community re-established itself, although very few Viennese Jews returned to Vienna to live after the war. They were rebuffed when they attempted to reclaim their homes and other properties. Vienna was also a Displaced Persons camp for Jewish survivors from Eastern Europe.

In the decades after the Holocaust, Austria has had a very mixed approach to their Jewish citizens. On the one hand, when the Soviets allowed Jews to leave, there was a transit camp in Vienna for them in route to Israel. A few years later, when Iranian Jews escaped Iran after the Shah’s fall, and they needed a stop-over place, they used the same transit camp.

On the other hand, open antisemitism continues to be prevalent and acceptable in Austria. Among other examples, in 1986, Austrians elected Kurt Waldheim, a Nazi collaborator, as President of Austria. This was despite his role in World War II as an interpreter and intelligence officer for the German army unit that deported most of the 56,000 Jews of Salonika to their deaths. Understandably, the US Ambassador to Austria, Ronald S. Lauder, refused to attend Waldheim’s inauguration.

In 2000, the extremist right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), led by Jörg Haider, a man with open neo-Nazi sympathies, entered the Austrian government. After Haider publicly made antisemitic comments against Ariel Muzicant, President of the Federation of Austrian Jewish Communities, Israel chose to recall its ambassador in protest. After talks in Jerusalem with the Austrian foreign minister, full relations were restored in 2003.

Due to public pressure, in the late 1980s, the Austrian government began reexamining its role in the Holocaust, revising the “Austrian Victim Myth” they had clung to since World War II. In 1991, Chancellor Franz Vranitzky gave a speech to the Austrian parliament in which he acknowledged the shared responsibility of Austrians for the suffering inflicted on the country’s Jewish community. In July 1993, Vranitzky reiterated this admission in a speech before the Israeli Knesset.

Additionally, Austria began instituting several programs and incentives to support Holocaust education and fight antisemitism.

Today, there is a growing Jewish population in Vienna. It primarily consists of descendants of survivors, and Eastern European refugees from the post-Holocaust era. There are also Russian and Iranian Jews who came to Vienna for its transit camp and chose to stay rather than continue to other destinations. Recently, there has also been a growing Israeli population. Vienna has approximately 15,000 Jews registered in its community, although the actual number of Jews is likely higher.

Most Jewish institutions, organizations, and kosher restaurants are in the historically Jewish area of Leopoldstadt, which is the central Jewish district. The Stadttempel, the only synagogue that survived the Holocaust, houses the community offices and chief rabbinate. The synagogue has limited visiting hours and heavy security due to the August 1981 terrorist attack by Palestinian terrorists. Remarkably, many of the synagogue’s members do not live in Vienna. They support the community because their great-grandparents were synagogue members, and they have strong emotional ties to the community.

Today, Vienna’s Jewish community is regarded as one of the most dynamic in the European Union, yet it is a shadow of its Golden Age greatness. Vienna’s more significant impact is its lesson for eternity: Jews may be successful, powerful, and influential. They may be government leaders, successful businessman, and famous academics. Yet, if there exists unchecked antisemitism in the community, the Jewish position remains precarious.

Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA from 2007 – 2020. He is a popular speaker and has written for numerous publications. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org. A version of this article was originally published by Aish.

The post The Jews in Vienna: A Troubled History, and a Warning for Today (PART TWO) first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Lebanon Must Disarm Hezbollah to Have a Shot at Better Days, Says US Envoy

Thomas Barrack at the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., November 4, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

i24 News – Lebanon’s daunting social, economic and political issues would not get resolved unless the state persists in the efforts to disarm Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy behind so much of the unrest and destruction, special US envoy Tom Barrack told The National.

“You have Israel on one side, you have Iran on the other, and now you have Syria manifesting itself so quickly that if Lebanon doesn’t move, it’s going to be Bilad Al Sham again,” he said, using the historical Arabic name for the region sometimes known as “larger Syria.”

The official stressed the need to follow through on promises to disarm the Iranian proxy, which suffered severe blows from Israel in the past year, including the elimination of its entire leadership, and is considered a weakened though still dangerous jihadist outfit.

“There are issues that we have to arm wrestle with each other over to come to a final conclusion. Remember, we have an agreement, it was a great agreement. The problem is, nobody followed it,” he told The National.

Barrack spoke on the heels of a trip to Beirut, where he proposed a diplomatic plan for the region involving the full disarmament of Hezbollah by the Lebanese state.

The post Lebanon Must Disarm Hezbollah to Have a Shot at Better Days, Says US Envoy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Report: Putin Urges Iran to Accept ‘Zero Enrichment’ Nuclear Deal With US

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of a cultural forum dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Turkmen poet and philosopher Magtymguly Fragi, in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Oct. 11, 2024. Photo: Sputnik/Alexander Scherbak/Pool via REUTERS

i24 News – Russian President Vladimir Putin has told Iranian leadership that he supports the idea of a nuclear deal in which Iran is unable to enrich uranium, the Axios website reported on Saturday. The Russian strongman also relayed the message to his American counterpart, President Donald Trump, the report said.

Iranian news agency Tasnim issued a denial, citing an “informed source” as saying Putin had not sent any message to Iran in this regard.

Also on Saturday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that “Any negotiated solution must respect Iran’s right to enrichment. No agreement without recognizing our right to enrichment. If negotiations occur, the only topic will be the nuclear program. No other issues, especially defense or military matters, will be on the agenda.”

The post Report: Putin Urges Iran to Accept ‘Zero Enrichment’ Nuclear Deal With US first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Syria’s Al-Sharaa Attending At Least One Meeting With Israeli Officials in Azerbaijan

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/Pool

i24 News – Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa is attending at least one meeting with Israeli officials in Azerbaijan today, despite sources in Damascus claiming he wasn’t attending, a Syrian source close to President Al-Sharaa tells i24NEWS.

The Syrian source stated that this is a series of two or three meetings between the sides, with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani also in attendance, along with Ahmed Al-Dalati, the Syrian government’s liaison for security meetings with Israel.

The high-level Israeli delegation includes a special envoy of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, as well as security and military figures.

The purpose of the meetings is to discuss further details of the security agreement to be signed between Israel and Syria, the Iranian threat in Syria and Lebanon, Hezbollah’s weapons, the weapons of Palestinian militias, the Palestinians camps in Lebanon, and the future of Palestinian refugees from Gaza in the region.

The possibility of opening an Israeli coordination office in Damascus, without diplomatic status, might also be discussed.

The source stated that the decision to hold the meetings in Azerbaijan, made by Israel and the US, is intended to send a message to Iran.

The post Syria’s Al-Sharaa Attending At Least One Meeting With Israeli Officials in Azerbaijan first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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