The name of Vienna’s former mayor Karl Lueger was finally expunged from a section of the city’s main boulevard, the Ringstrasse, in July 2012. Lueger was a modernizer who, at the end of the 19th century, established Vienna’s streetcar system and brought the city’s gas and electricity networks into public ownership. He was also a…
VIENNA (JTA) — Austria’s largest urban transport firm for the first time commemorated the Holocaust, in a subway art installation in memory of hundreds of victims who lived as prisoners on a single street. The Wiener Linien installation unveiled Thursday at the Herminengasse station features a graph scheme in which each identified victim that had…
The Austrian-Jewish author Stefan Zweig has been having a bit of a moment – he’s recently been the subject of a critically acclaimed film (“Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe”) and his experience as a refugee during World War Two has proven especially poignant in our time. Born in Vienna in 1881, Zweig, along with fellow writer…
(JTA) — President Reuven Rivlin of Israel said he will “never condone” Israeli representatives meeting with representatives of the European far right. Rivlin sent a letter to the Vienna Jewish community in response to a message from its head, Oskar Deutsch, and World Jewish Congress Vice President Ariel Muzicant in which they criticized Israeli politicians…
That was some dinner. Good friends, great food. Think I’ll grab this tram and switch to another one in front of the Parliament. OK, here I am on the platform, waiting for my second tram. Midnight. What’s this on the bench? A mother, a sick-looking baby, two children, two men. Obviously Syrians. Oh how sad….
The Jewish Community of Vienna accused the city’s prosecutor’s office of ignoring anti-Semitic incitement by pro-Palestinian activists. The incitement took the form of a caricature published last month on the Facebook page of organizers of the Vienna march of International Quds Day — an annual event held in cities across the world since it was…
The United States and other major powers are not in a rush to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday, suggesting an accord was unlikely hours ahead of a deadline set by the U.S. Congress for a quick review. “We’re here because we believe we are making…
Growing up in Vienna means that your primary school education included memorizing the first stanza of the Blue Danube Waltz (“Die Donau so blau, so blau, so blau…”), knowing when the Ottomans unsuccessfully laid siege to Vienna (1529 and 1683), and learning about the city’s best-known boulevard, the Ringstrasse. While I might not recall all…
100% of profits support our journalism
