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Austria Jews
Jews have also lived in Austria for centuries, at times
enduring hostility and repression. At other times, the Jewish
community has flourished and enjoyed a high degree of tolerance.
Joseph II (r. 1780-90) lifted restrictions that had barred them
from particular trades and education, and despite widespread
prejudice against them, Jews achieved positions of eminence in
business, the professions, and the arts in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. The Jewish community in Austria
expanded greatly in the second half of the nineteenth century
when Jews from other parts of the empire came to settle there,
mostly in Vienna. Most of these so-called Eastern Jews came from
the province of Galicia, an area located in southern present-day
Poland and in western present-day Ukraine. The province contained
about two-thirds of the Habsburg Empire's Jewish population.
After the Anschluss, the Nazis systematically applied their
racial policies to the country's Jews. Approximately 100,000
Austrian Jews managed to emigrate from Austria before World War
II began, but more than 65,000 Jews died in concentration camps
and prisons of the Third Reich. As a result, Austrian Jewry was
virtually annihilated. After World War II, few surviving members
of Austria's Jewish community returned to Austria, and Austrian
authorities made no concerted official efforts to repatriate
them.
As of 1990, only a little more than 7,000 Jews were
registered with the Jewish Orthodox Religious Community in
Vienna. This figure included recent Jewish immigrants from the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe but excluded Jews who did not
declare their religious affiliation. Because the only statistical
information on the number of Jews in Austria is available on a
confessional basis, accurate figures on the number of Austrians
with Jewish backgrounds is not available. It is generally assumed
that this group is larger than the officially registered one.
Data as of December 1993
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