Jewish Heritage in central Europe

Vienna

Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna

Permanent collection on jewish history and religion as well as temporary exhibitions on various subjects, such as jewish literature, architecture, photography, and art.

Museum Judenplatz Vienna is considered a singular place of remembrance; it combines three things: Rachel Whiteread's Memorial, the excavations of a medieval synagogue and a museum about medieval Jewry; together they form a unique unit of remembrance.

Floor tiles around the memorial contain the names of the places where Austrian Jews were killed during Nazi tyranny.

The focal point of the Museum Judenplatz Vienna are three exhibition rooms on medieval Jewry in Vienna and the excavations of a medieval synagogue. Here, one can learn about the religious, cultural and social life of Viennese Jews in the Middle Ages, until they were driven away and destroyed in the years 1420-21, the so-called "Vienna Geserah".

Synagogue was built in the years 1825-26 by Josef Kornhäusel, the most eminent architect of the Vienna Biedermeier era. He designed the building's interior and the religious objects as well. Since only Catholic buildings were places of worship permitted to stand adjacent to major streets, the Synagogue was fitted into an apartment complex. This is the reason that it was the only building, of 94 Jewish synagogues and temples, to survive Reichskristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938) without being completely destroyed.

Sigmund-Freud-Museum. For almost half a century, from 1891 to 1938, Dr. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, lived and worked in this house. In 1938, following the Anschluss, Dr. Freud was forced to emigrate. He spent his last years in Great Britain. His office and private apartment are now a museum. Thanks to Freud’s daughter Anna, the museum owns the original furniture from his waiting room, nearly eighty pieces of Freud’s collection of antiques, and some of his personal belongings. The few existing original film and sound recordings of Sigmund Freud and his family can be viewed in the museum’s media room.

Budapest

Budapest Central Synagogue Dohany Utca Synagogue

Budapest Central Synagogue is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world after the Emanuel Synagogue in New York. Completed in 1859, it was built in a Moorish-Byzantine style by the Austrian architect Ludwig Förster. The building was partly destroyed by bombing campaigns during World War II, but has been the subject of much renovation to restore its two shining Moorish domes to their former brilliance. The Jewish Museum next door recounts the horrors of the Holocaust and displays exhibits dating as far back as the Middle Ages. The museum, which was built between 1931 and 1936, stands on the former home of Theodor Herzl, who was the founding father of Zionism and responsible for developing the idea of a modern Jewish state.

Weeping Willow Holocaust Memorial. In 1991 a monument dedicated to the memory of the Hungarian Jews who perished in the Holocaust was installed in the rear courtyard of the synagogue, in a small park named for Raoul Wallenberg. The Holocaust memorial, the work of Imre Varga, resembles a weeping willow whose leaves bear inscriptions with the names of the victims and boasts the inscription: “Whose agony is greater than mine.”

Jewish cemetery. Hundreds of thousands of Jews are buried in this vast cemetery. One section contains a large Holocaust memorial wall with the names of thousands of Jews from Budapest who lost their lives in the Holocaust.

Jewish Museum. The exhibition of the Museum shows not only feasts, celebrations and rituals of Jewish people, but the dreads of the holocaust. One of its interesting exhibits is a Jewish tombstone with a picture of a menorah etched on it, dating back to the 3rd century from the town of Esztergom.

Orthodox Synagogue. This synagogue was built in 1913 and is still in use today. Its courtyard, one of the best preserved in Hungary, reveals its once vibrant community life. Next to the building is a kosher restaurant, Hannah.

Bratislava

Chatam Sofer's grave. Every year, thousands of pious Jews descend on the tomb of Rabbi Chatam Sofer (Hatam Sofer) in Bratislava to honor this outstanding figure – scholar, teacher and spiritual leader. Mausoleum of Chatam Sofer is created by a torso of onetime cemetery of the 17^th. There are buried the most significant rabbis of Jewish community of Bratislava in 23 graves and 41 crypts, of whom Chatam Sofer is most distinguished, as well as great uncles of German poet Heinrich Heine.

Memorial of holocaust. Monument to victims of racial persecution by the sculptor Milan Lukac and architect Peter Zalman as well as Wall of memories placed on the site, where once used to be a representative synagogue of the so-called Neological community built within 1893 - 1894.

Museum of Jewish culture in Slovakia. The exhibits feature the history and culture of Jews living in the territory of Slovakia since the times of the Great Moravian Empire. It shows the everyday life of the Jewish community, furnishing of synagogues, important Jews in Slovakia's History, as well as a section on the Holocaust.