Leopoldstadt, Vienna: An Unlikely Safe Place for Jews

In Austria, the far-right is being invited to lead the government for the first time since World War II. Despite President Alexander Van der Bellen asking the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) to form a coalition, Austria’s small Jewish community retains its unlikely optimism. 

 The majority of the country’s roughly 15,000 Jews live in Vienna, where Hitler spent his young adulthood and later returned to proclaim the Anschluss to an adoring crowd from the swastika-swathed terrace of the Neue Burg. In recent years, particularly since the chancellorship of wunderkind Sebastian Kurz, the country has maintained a vocal support of the State of Israel while offering a proactively supportive environment for its Jewish citizens. 

Here Hasidic Jews walk unafraid, shopping in bustling kosher supermarkets and dining in restaurants with Hebrew names like Veahavta (“and you shall love”) and Mea Shearim (named for the town in Israel). The Parliamentary Library prominently showcases an exhibit warning against the threat of antisemitism to the country’s democracy while showcasing the values of lived Jewish life. 

According to the exhibit’s curator, Parliamentary advisor Rifka Junger, herself the Orthodox daughter of survivors, its goal is to embody the principle articulated by Psalm 34’s verse encouraging “turning from evil, and performing good.” Compelling video testimonials of photogenic Viennese Jewish youth discuss the hateful rhetoric they have been subject to. But other clips emphasize religious traditions and values as well as the Jewish contributions to wider Austrian society and history. 

A spike in antisemitic graffiti was seen after Hamas’ Oct 7 attack against Israel. But this is relatively benign compared to the large-scale and often unruly anti-Israel protests plaguing European cities with much larger Jewish populations like London, Paris and Berlin.

Danielle Spera, a prominent former broadcast journalist and curator of the local Jewish Museum, and her husband, psychotherapist and former Parliamentarian Martin Engelberg, credit strong civil ties cultivated organically, coupled with politicians looking to bridge divides, not exacerbate them. To a group of Jewish university students I helped lead on a recent visit, the couple expressed gratitude to Turkey’s ambassador to Austria for preventing violent outbursts from the country’s 300,000-strong Turkish Muslim community. 

Spera and a local Turkish Imam just published a book in which they engage in respectful interfaith dialogue without shying away from the ripple effects the Israel-Gaza war has had on their respective religious communities. Israel’s Consul to Austria, Yaffa Olivitsky, remarked to us that she has found Austria a refreshingly supportive community, sympathetic to Israel’s efforts to free its hostages held by Hamas, and in which she can publicly practice her own Orthodox faith. 

All this in a country which sought to destroy its Jewish community three times. Under Duke Albert V, in what became known as the Vienna Gesera, Jews were starved, tortured, forced to convert to Christianity, or executed. In 1421, 200 Jews were burned alive. The local synagogue was razed. Its stones were then repurposed to construct the University of Vienna. A Latin relief still at the site of the murders reads, in part, “Everything dissolves that is hidden and sinful. Thus did the flames of hate rage through the entire city in 1421 and punish the terrible crimes of the Hebrew dogs.”

Two and a half centuries later, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I expelled the Jews, leading the cheering locals to rename what had been the Jewish quarter Leopoldstadt in his honor. 

Then came the deportation of 65,000 Jews to the concentration camps during the Holocaust. My own grandmother was one of the lucky Austrian Jews. She and her family escaped shortly after Kristallnacht and made it to the United States. As Richard Cockett describes in his history of Vienna, Kristallnacht “was more destructive and savage in Vienna than almost anywhere else in what was now Greater Germany. Up to 50 synagogues were burned and over 4,000 Jewish-owned shops looted. About 6,000 people were arrested, of whom at least 27 were murdered.”

German-speaking police now serenely guard their restaurants. Public displays of sympathy for the Nazis are outlawed, as is the giving of speeches from the terrace of the Neue Burg. And prayers are recited daily for the safety of their coreligionists in Israel. 

Despite their country’s history and the fraught current moment, the Jews who reside where both Sigmund Freud and the founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, once lived, do not dream of relocating. German-speaking police now serenely guard their restaurants. Public displays of sympathy for the Nazis are outlawed, as is the giving of speeches from the terrace of the Neue Burg. And prayers are recited daily for the safety of their coreligionists in Israel. The Jewish virtue of hope for bright days ahead remains unabated. Austria’s Jews have survived worse. One kosher restaurant proudly displays a large Hebrew sticker. It reads in Hebrew shuva Yisrael, return O Israel.

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” which examines the Exodus story’s impact on the United States, “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”