Forgotten Places: A Look at Austria's Jewish History
ORF (Austrian Public Broadcasting), June 23, 2024
German original: https://orf.at/stories/3361136/
Before 1938, 200,000 Jews lived in Austria. During the Nazi era, tens of thousands were murdered and over 100,000 were driven out. Today, around 15,000 Jews live in the country. The Federal Office for the Protection of Monuments has now compiled a list of Jewish sites in Austria, from medieval prayer houses to Jewish cemeteries, reports ZIB1. ORF.at has created an interactive map from this list, which allows users to discover Jewish history.
One of these places is the Jewish cemetery in Frauenkirchen in Burgenland. The last burial there took place in 1956: a family had fled to freedom across Lake Neusiedl during the Hungarian uprising, but their little daughter drowned. The Jewish cemetery was the place where the girl could be buried according to religious rites. There is no longer a gravestone.
The Catholic basilica in Frauenkirchen is a popular destination for many day-trippers, but the Jewish cemetery in the immediate vicinity is abandoned and forgotten. Around 400 Jews lived in the Seewinkel district before the Second World War, but only one returned after the war. The Jewish community was wiped out by the Nazi regime.
Over 400 of these Jewish memorials and monuments, which the Federal Office for the Protection of Monuments has recorded in a directory, are shown on the interactive map above. The map includes around 300 places of worship and over 70 cemeteries, offering an insight into Jewish history. The memorials range from synagogues dating back to the Middle Ages to well-preserved cemeteries, such as the one in Frauenkirchen.
Few people visit the cemetery
In Judaism, the dead are not to be disturbed, and graves are not to be disturbed. They are believed to remain until the resurrection of the dead. To visit the cemetery today, you have to get the key for the cemetery gate from the municipal office. The number of gravestones shows how large the community once was.
Right next to the cemetery gate is a small, single-storey building: the Tahara House. This is where the dead were washed and prepared for burial. The cemetery caretaker had a small apartment in the building, and the entrance gate is a slight reminder of its former function: the round arch above the entrance is made of colored glass, giving it the appearance of a modest church window. The door itself is locked; the owner uses the building as a storage room and access is not permitted.
Hardly any Jewish returnees to rural communities
"In Burgenland there were the famous 'seven communities'," explains Paul Mahringer from the Federal Office for the Protection of Monuments in an interview with ORF. "There was a vibrant Jewish community here for centuries. Today, everything is owned by the Vienna Jewish Community. Hardly anyone from rural Judaism has returned to their old homeland." The seven communities, seven towns in what is now northern and central Burgenland, became places of refuge for Jews expelled from Vienna in the 17th century.
The Esterhazy princes granted protection to the "highly princely Esterhazy Jews", as they were officially known, in return for substantial payments. In most regions of Austria, Jews were not allowed to take up residence until the second half of the 19th century. It was only the 1867 Basic Law that granted them freedom of settlement. Before that, they were dependent on the goodwill of the local princes: they could place Jews under their protection and usually made a good profit from doing so.
Sheltered in the shadow of the castles
Just how necessary it was to protect the noble patron can be seen in Gattendorf, twenty kilometers north of Frauenkirchen. The "Judenhof" is built directly onto the baroque palace. This close structural connection shows, on the one hand, that the protection was meant seriously, and on the other hand, that the Esterhazy family owned enough palaces: Gattendorf Palace was no longer used as a residence by them very early on, but as a granary.
Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts wohnten jüdische Familien mit rund 250 Mitgliedern in diesem dörflichen Schutzgebiet und Ghetto. Es gab eine Synagoge und eine Mikwe – ein Bad für die rituellen Waschungen. Heute stehen nur noch die ehemaligen Wohngebäude, seit Jahrzehnten unbenutzt. Die Synagoge wurde im Jahr 1996 abgerissen – mit Genehmigung der zuständigen Behörden.
Hier habe sich in den vergangenen Jahren einiges geändert, so Mahringer. „Das hier ist der letzte Überrest des ländlichen, dörflichen Judentums des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Es ist das sozialhistorische Zeugnis einer Lebensweise, die ausgelöscht wurde. Es ist sozusagen eine dreidimensionale geschichtliche Quelle.“ Die jüdische Bevölkerung von Gattendorf und Frauenkirchen war arm. Aufgrund ihrer Religion waren sie von Handwerk und Landwirtschaft ausgeschlossen. Was blieb, war der Kleinhandel.
A testament to poverty and hardship
The "Judenhof" makes the poverty and hardship of life at that time tangible. The building is cramped and unadorned, completely lacking in the monumental features that one otherwise associates with the term "monument". According to Mahringer, at least the roof has been renovated. The owner had received funding from the Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments, but also had to meet certain requirements for the preservation of the building.
However, few people are happy when the monument conservationists come. "Can we finally tear it down?" was the first thing the neighbors said when we came for the first time to inspect it," says Mahringer. But the building was – unlike the synagogue – classified as worthy of protection. "That doesn't mean that it has to be made freely accessible. It doesn't have to be a museum," he explains, "but it can't be allowed to fall into disrepair any more.
The view of what should be preserved for future generations has changed. They are now also witnesses to everyday life, they are also a reference to poverty and the struggle for survival, not just to splendor and pomp.
A painful reminder of the Holocaust
The testimonies of Austria's Jewish history are still particularly sensitive in terms of perception: the family that owned a Jewish prayer house in a small community in the Vienna Woods refused to allow the ORF team to inspect the building – for fear of further visitors.
The relationship with Judaism is still a special one in Austria. It is a shared history, but it is not an easy one. The Jewish cemetery in Frauenkirchen shows this in an almost painful way: the only new stone at this otherwise abandoned place is dedicated to the Rosenfeld family: grandparents, mother, two little girls, born in 1936 and 1938. They all died on the same day, June 15, 1944, in the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz.
Fritz Dittlbacher (text), ORF News, Sandra Schober (data), Lukas Krummholz (image), sofe (editing), all ORF.at
This report accompanies the program ZIB1, ORF2, June 23, 2024.