Streetlights and Shadows      

Jewish Vienna saw its heyday after World War I — over ten percent of the population was Jewish, and while it was a magnet for secular culture, nearly every one of the two dozen districts had at least one shul. By 1938, 400 years of history and tradition literally went up in smoke, yet many of the old markers remain. And despite the horrors the city witnessed, Jewish life is again beginning to come around full circle

The Darker Side of Exile

Exactly 400 years since Jews were readmitted to Vienna by the Habsburg monarchs in 1624, we’re walking the streets of a city that has often served as an important center of Jewish life. The 20th century inaugurated a new heyday; when World War I forced Eastern European Jews to flee, many leaders and organizations found refuge in Vienna. In the 1920s, the city hosted Europe’s third-largest Jewish population: Roughly one out of every nine Viennese was Jewish, and 18 of the city’s 22 districts had at least one synagogue.

We’re going to look around the Second District, home to most of Vienna’s community today and a Jewish center since 1624.

The tram glides down Taborstrasse, a main thoroughfare, as pedestrians mill around cheerfully. Stores and apartment buildings line the streets, an urban milieu unrelieved by greenery. The occasional fully dressed Jewish passerby stands out among the crowd in the summer heat.

I’m apprehensive about my tour of Jewish Vienna. I love seeing where Yidden lived, hearing the stories of their lives, but something tells me that here we are about to see the darker side of our galus story. The Wall of Names memorial lists 65,000 Jews who were killed from all over Austria. The sidewalks I’m strolling on saw Jews pushed off, forced to kneel and scrub streets, taunted and beaten, and a glorious community was destroyed like a flourishing tree in sulphuric acid rain.