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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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German Authorities Warn of Potentially Violent Anti-Israel Protests in Berlin on International Workers’ Day

Anti-Israel protesters march in Germany, March 26, 2025. Photo: Sebastian Willnow/dpa via Reuters Connect

German authorities have warned of large-scale, potentially violent anti-Israel demonstrations expected to unfold in Berlin during the International Workers’ Day protests on Thursday.

Every year on May 1, workers’ rights are celebrated through demonstrations held around the world. In Germany, the day is marked by “Revolutionary May Day,” an annual protest organized by radical left-wing activists that often draws a broad coalition of groups and heightened police attention.

In a statement, the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) said they expect Thursday’s protest to center on tensions in the Middle East, with a particular focus on the war in Gaza, German media reported. Organized by anti-Israel activists, this year’s demonstration is being led under the slogan “Free Gaza.”

The demonstration is reportedly scheduled to begin at 6 pm in the Kreuzberg district, southeast of the city center, with organizers expecting more than 20,000 participants.

While Berlin police have historically kept the raucous protests under control for years, the LKA expects to focus this year on not only preventing and responding to attacks and vandalism across the city but also addressing terrorist propaganda and calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.

German law enforcement specifically issued warnings to journalists covering the protests on the streets, cautioning that they may be targeted with verbal and physical aggression.

In their statement, the LKA said past experience shows that “journalists and mainstream media are often viewed critically or even with hostility by the pro-Palestinian movement, being seen as part of the ‘lying press’ and allies of the West or ‘Zionists,’ with their work frequently obstructed.”

Before the Hamas-led massacres across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Berlin police had extensive experience with violent supporters of terrorism. However, since Hamas’s onslaught, anti-Israel sentiment has spread across Germany, fueling pro-Palestinian protests, takeovers of university campuses, and a rise in antisemitic incidents.

During last year’s protest, police deployed more than 7,000 officers, minimizing opportunities for violence. However, 34 arrests were made, with those detained charged with serious public disorder, bodily harm, and incitement to hatred, while five officers were injured during the incidents.

Compared to previous years, local police have noted a decline in unrest at these protests since 2021, when the “Revolutionary May Day” demonstrations led to 93 injured officers and over 350 arrests.

Germany has experienced a sharp spike in antisemitism amid the war in Gaza. In just the first six months of 2024 alone, the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin, for example, surpassed the total for all of the prior year and reached the highest annual count on record, according to Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS).

The figures compiled by RIAS were the highest count for a single year since the federally funded body began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015, showing the German capital averaged nearly eight anti-Jewish outrages a day from January to June last year.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2023, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.

The post German Authorities Warn of Potentially Violent Anti-Israel Protests in Berlin on International Workers’ Day first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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NYC Police Head Off Anti-Zionist Protest After Black Residents Urged to ‘Rise Up Against’ Orthodox Jews

Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of WithinOurLifetime (WOL), leading a pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City on August 14, 2024. Photo: Michael Nigro via Reuters Connect

Anti-Israel activists attempted to swarm the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn on Monday night to protest “Zionism,” heightening safety concerns among the New York City borough’s Orthodox Jewish community.

Scores of pro-Palestinian agitators sought to descend upon the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Crown Heights, confronting visibly Jewish individuals, shouting obscenities, and throwing punches at counter-protesters. However, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) deployed officers to prevent the anti-Zionist activists from wreaking havoc.

As police vans and cars patrolled the streets, dozens of officers walked alongside the protesters’ route while streets were blocked by police on bicycles who cut off the path to Crown Heights, home to the headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic movement within Orthodox Judaism that operates around the world. Anti-Israel activists had called on protesters, especially Black local residents, to “rise up” against Chabad.

Jewish community watch groups, including Crown Heights Shomrim, joined patrols in the area.

Chabad-Lubavitch spokesperson Rabbi Motti Seligson said on social media that the protesters never made it to Crown Heights due to the NYPD deployments.

The raucous demonstrations came after the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters hosted Israel’s controversial national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir — who has called for annexing the West Bank and the emigration of Gaza’s residents — on Thursday night. Ben-Gvir’s visit drew large protests from anti-Israel activists who bellowed chants such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that has been widely used as a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Jewish and pro-Israel counter-protesters met the demonstrators in Crown Heights, leading to clashes. In one incident, a mob of the counter-protesters chased and harassed a woman who they mistook for a participant in the anti-Ben-Gvir demonstrations.

Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters subsequently issued a statement denouncing the anti-Israel agitators and those who targeted the woman, reportedly a neighborhood resident in her 30s who was simply investigating the scene.

“The violent provocateurs who called for the genocide of Jews in support of terrorists and terrorism — outside a synagogue, in a Jewish neighborhood, where some of the worst antisemitic violence in American history was perpetrated, and where many residents share deep bonds with the victims of Oct. 7 — did so in order to intimidate, provoke, and instill fear,” Seligson said in a statement. “We condemn the crude language and violence of the small breakaway group of young people; such actions are entirely unacceptable and wholly antithetical to the Torah’s values. The fact that a possibly uninvolved bystander got pulled into the melee further underscores the point.”

Following the explosive clashes, a group called the Bronx Palestine Solidarity Committee issued a public statement on Instagram on Sunday urging black New Yorkers to target and harass members of Chabad-Lubavitch. The organization, which is an affiliate group of the anti-Israel group Within Our Lifetime, urged Black people in Brooklyn to target Orthodox Jews in the area.

“Waiting for the sleeping giant that is Carribean Brooklyn, who have long suffered abuse and oppression at the hands of the racist Zionist Chabad Lubavitch to rise up against them,” the group wrote, vowing to “flood the streets of Crown Heights to inform them Zionism is not welcome here.”

The Bronx Palestine Solidarity Committee continued, arguing that Orthodox Jewish landlords have “violently exploited” the Black residents of Brooklyn through collecting exorbitant amounts in rent to supposedly “feed their genocidal land grabs in Palestine.”

“What would happen if Caribbean Brooklyn brought that VYBZ Kartel Barclays energy with ferocity and tore down these f—king monsters!?” the statement continued. “We will flood the streets of Crown Heights to inform them Zionism is not welcome here. Free Palestine. Bring flags and keffiyeh.”

VYBZ Kartel is a highly popular Reggae artist within the Caribbean community. He performed to sold-out crowds at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York in April. 

Crown Heights was also the site of infamous 1991 riots, in which Black New Yorkers targeted and attacked Jewish residences and businesses for three days. The riots, which were sparked by a fatal car crash involving a Hasidic Jew and two young black children, were largely motivated by an unfounded belief that Jewish New Yorkers received preferential treatment from city services.

Following the latest clashes near Chabad’s headquarters, Crown Heights Bites Back and other radical groups called for a meeting to plan for future confrontations, decrying protest organizers for not being prepared and calling on supporters to train for “defensive and offensive tactics.”

The group went on to describe Chabad as “Zionist Nazis” and Zionism as an inherently oppressive idea.

The post NYC Police Head Off Anti-Zionist Protest After Black Residents Urged to ‘Rise Up Against’ Orthodox Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Police Investigate After British Neo-Nazis Shock Pub With Swastika Cake to Celebrate Hitler’s Birthday

Illustrative: A police car is seen outside Victoria Station in Manchester, England. Photo: Reuters/Phil Noble

In the United Kingdom, the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) have started an investigation into potential crimes at a gathering of members of the British Movement, a neo-Nazi group, at the Duke of Edinburgh pub in Royston on April 19.

Photos from the organization’s Telegram channel showed participants holding Nazi banners, performing Nazi salutes, and eating a cake decorated with a swastika to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday, which is April 20. One man in the group wore a German soccer jersey with “Fuhrer 44” on the back.

Law enforcement have confirmed they are reviewing for potential violations of Section 18 public order laws, which criminalize efforts to foment hate. “Police in Oldham are investigating reports that a group attended a pub on Market Street in Royton in possession of Nazi memorabilia,” a GMP spokesperson said.

The British Movement’s Northern Region wrote about the event, describing how “on a gorgeous sunny afternoon in Greater Manchester, a platoon of Northwest British Movement met up to celebrate the 136th birthday of Uncle A. It certainly didn’t take long for the dimly lit interior of the Oldham boozer to be filled with the warm laughter of comrades old and new. Tables were filled with a plethora of drinks: frosty pints of beer, fruity cocktails, schooners, and birthday cake!”

Employees of the pub did not know about the public display of Nazi symbols at the time, learning only afterward and prompting a report to the police.

“They said they had a cake, but we didn’t know what happened because they covered everything up,” Jean Anderson, who is taking over operations of the pub from her partner Terry English, told The Manchester Evening News. “The pub was full. There were about six to eight men and one woman. They sat in the corner and didn’t cause any problems. I have never seen them before, but they definitely won’t be coming in here again.”

English said, “I just can’t understand why they picked this pub.”

The Duke of Edinburgh’s operator, Craft Union Pubs, released a statement to The Independent, describing the British Movement group’s efforts to hide their offensive activities.

“A group entered the Duke of Edinburgh on Saturday under the pretext of celebrating a birthday and gathered in a back area of the venue. The group actively concealed their clothing and their activities during the visit and as a result, their actions were not visible to staff at the time,” the statement read. “The operator who runs the pub was therefore unaware of what had taken place until after the event. Upon becoming aware, the operator reported the matter to the police immediately.”

Craft Union Pubs added, “To be clear, we are absolutely appalled at what took place. We do not and will not tolerate this kind of behavior, and these people aren’t welcome in any of our venues. We are focused on uniting our local communities, not dividing them. We are supporting our operator to look after their team, who are understandably incredibly distressed by the incident.”

“There is absolutely no place in any civilized society for those who celebrate hatred and evil. Honoring Hitler is not an act of free speech; it is a shameless glorification of one of the darkest crimes in human history,” a spokesperson for the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters. told Jewish News. “Neo-Nazism must be unequivocally condemned, and we urge the police to investigate.”

The British Movement emerged in 1968. David Lawrence, senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, called it a “highly fringe Nazi group that is repulsive even by the standards of the far right.”

Lawrence explained that “the group is trying to raise its profile with small propaganda actions, especially in the North West, where its numbers have grown slightly due to the defection of activists from a larger fascist organization, Patriotic Alternative. The promotion of base racial hatred is always dangerous. However, the British Movement today is no closer to ushering in a new Reich than when it launched decades ago and remains a tiny collection of crank Hitler fetishists and washed-up hooligans.”

CST recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2024, the second-highest level ever seen. The group noted that “there were still 909 incidents reported to CST in 2024 where the Holocaust or Nazi era were invoked, comprising 26 percent of all incidents.”

The post Police Investigate After British Neo-Nazis Shock Pub With Swastika Cake to Celebrate Hitler’s Birthday first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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