Once Home to Adolf Hitler, Vienna Is Reaching Out to New York's Jews

Vienna's deputy mayor and more than 20 government, religious, and lay leaders from that city will meet tomorrow morning with Chasidic leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the first of several gatherings aimed at showing off the Austrian capital, once home to Adolf Hitler, as a safe and welcoming place for Jews.

Sponsored by the city of Vienna, the delegation, which includes the city's chief rabbi, Paul Chaim Eisenberg, will host a panel discussion about contemporary Jewish life in the city called "Why Vienna of All Places?" and sponsor a New York screening of a recent Austrian documentary called "Zorro's Bar Mitzvah."

On the eve of World War II, Austria was home to about 300,000 Jews — about two-thirds of whom lived in Vienna. More than 130,000 Viennese Jews were expelled, and almost 60,000 more were killed in concentration and death camps, according to statistics provided by the government-sponsored Jewish Welcome Service, an organization that promotes Jewish life in the city. Today, Austria's Jewish population, while growing, is still less than 10,000.

"It would be an interesting aspect if people were to move there, but that's not the most important part of this," the deputy mayor of Vienna, Renate Brauner, told The New York Sun. "It's more about showing that Vienna is a modern and vibrant city, and that the Jewish community is a lively part of that."

The deputy consul general of Austria in New York, Andreas Launer, said "the image of Austria is not something very positive in the Jewish community" because the government and populace were too slow to accept responsibility for its Nazi-era crimes.

"There was a collective amnesia after the war, but attitudes have changed completely," he said in an interview. "In the past two decades, Austrians have confronted themselves with the dark chapter of their history."

Mr. Launer said he also hoped this week's events would highlight how Austria helped Jews flee Iran and the Soviet Union. In the latter half of the 20th century, Austria served as a temporary stop for hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees en route to Israel, America, and elsewhere.

The spiritual leader of Park East Synagogue, Rabbi Arthur Schneier, was born in Vienna. He fled to Hungary in 1939, when he was 9. "Austria, unlike Germany, took advantage of the myth that they were victims — and they were not," Rabbi Schneier, who survived the war in hiding, said. "Austria was not occupied. The state joined, and embraced, Nazi Germany."

Citing its marginalization of a far-right politician, Jorg Haider, its prosecution of a British Holocaust denier, David Irving, and its construction of Holocaust memorials, he said Austria has come a long way in recent years. "It's an ongoing process, and it has to be encouraged," Rabbi Schneier, who will participate in the "Why Vienna of All Places?" panel discussion tomorrow night, said.

While in Brooklyn tomorrow morning, the Viennese representatives will visit a yeshiva and several Jewish social services organizations, before heading to Brooklyn Borough Hall. There, Ms. Brauner will meet with the president of Brooklyn, Marty Markowitz, to inaugurate a so-called friendship pact between Brooklyn and Vienna's historic Jewish district, Leopoldstadt.

In addition to four Jewish-themed events in New York, the Viennese government this week will sponsor several gatherings, celebrating Vienna as a cultural, intellectual, and business capital. "Vienna in New York" will sponsor a panel discussion at New York University about trends in psychoanalysis, and a photography exhibit at the Grant Gallery in SoHo. Delegates will also tour the eco-friendly 7 World Trade Center tower, and meet with members of Mayor Bloomberg 's and Comptroller William Thompson's staffs, according to the coordinator of "Vienna in New York," Andrea Leitner.