Austrian Zionism and the Jews of the New Europe

From the perspective of the Jewish Agency for Israel, the situation was clear. In October 1999, Austria's general elections had brought significant gains for the right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) of Jörg Haider. The negotiations that followed were watched closely, and, when it became apparent at the end of January 2000 that the FPÖ would be part of the new government coalition, the reaction was as swift as it was predictable. On February 7, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency, Chaim Chesler, called on all the Jews of Austria to immigrate to Israel immediately. ¹

Although Austria's political situation gave this call for immigration, or aliyah, a particular urgency, Chesler's statement was by no means unusual. As he himself pointed out in the ensuing controversy, calling for aliyah was part of his job. ² Moreover, the Jewish Agency had a long history of urging Austria's Jews to immigrate to Israel. For decades, these efforts had been met with the community's explicit approval. Reorganized in the wake of the devastation of the Shoah, Austria's postwar Jewish community always had a transient character. Because a long-term existence in a land of perpetrators seemed unfeasible, immigration to Israel was a principal alternative. Aside from the tens of thousands of displaced persons who traversed Austria after the war on their way to Israel/Palestine and the similarly large numbers of Jews from the Soviet Union who passed through the country in the 1970s and 1980s, it was the younger members of Vienna's postwar community who tended to regard Israel as their likely destination. As late as 1990, the director of the Jewish Agency in Vienna expressed his intention to convince all of the city's Jews to make aliyah—a statement that was featured prominently, and without a hint of disapproval, in Die Gemeinde, the publication of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (IKG), the central registry and official governing body of Vienna's Jewish community. ³

By the year 2000, however, things had changed drastically. For the Jewish Agency, the inclusion of the FPÖ in Austria's government may have been the perfect opportunity to reaffirm its call for aliyah, but, among the Austrian Jews so targeted, the effort was no longer welcome. Responding to Chesler's announcement, Vienna's chief rabbi Paul Chaim Eisenberg called the statement "out of place," adding that "we don't need an airlift of Austrian Jews." Although the current political climate was "unpleasant," it was "not a situation of danger." Ariel Muzicant, the head of the IKG and as such the official political representative of Vienna's Jews, was even more forceful in his criticism. In a statement, he "condemned the announcement in question for its unilateralness and total inconsiderateness toward Austrian Jewry." Queried further by the Jerusalem Post, Muzicant noted that the agency issued its call "only for their own political stature and not because they care about the Jews of Austria....If that's what the Jewish Agency has to do [to] justify their existence, they should go somewhere else." ⁴

In their criticism of Chesler's call for aliyah, Eisenberg and Muzicant echoed the feelings of most Austrian Jews. Their genuine consternation over Austria's political situation notwithstanding, many had taken exception to the Jewish Agency's statement. The sentiment was evident in numerous conversations that took place among Austria's Jews in February and March 2000. In the discussions I witnessed, there was a near consensus that the call for aliyah was inappropriate and had been issued out of deep ignorance over the situation of Austrian Jewry. "We are in Europe and they are in the Orient," one woman put it in typical fashion; "we are worlds apart, and they don't understand what's going on here. I don't feel unsafe here, and even if I did, I could never live there [in Israel] anyway." Other Jews with whom I discussed the call...