Herzog, Austrian chancellor open historic Viennese Jewish school

€90-million complex, the largest in Europe, "is the real answer to anti-Semitism," says minister.

By HAVIV RETTIG GUR
Herzog 224.88 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
Herzog 224.88
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
Austria's top leadership, Israeli cabinet minister Isaac Herzog and local community leaders inaugurated the largest Jewish school in Europe this week. The €90 million, 19,400-square-meter complex, the construction of which began in December 2006, houses the Zwi Perez Chajes School, a nursing home, preschool and synagogue. It is built on the playing fields of the storied Vienna Hakoah sports club, which at its height in the 1920s produced Olympic-level Jewish athletes. Hakoah was shut down with the Nazi takeover of Austria in the 1938 anschluss, an event which prompted the exodus of some 100,000 Austrian Jews to England, France, the Jewish settlement in mandatory Palestine and elsewhere. Over 60,000 were shipped to their deaths in East European death camps by the Nazi regime. From a pre-war Viennese Jewish community of some 170,000, fewer than a thousand are thought to have remained by the war's end. Today's community numbers about 7,500. The new complex offers Vienna's Jewish community "the best infrastructure of all Jewish communities in Europe," according to Ariel Muzicant, the head of the community. The significance of the inauguration was underlined by the guest list for the Wednesday ceremony, which included Austria's president Heinz Fischer, vice chancellor Wilhelm Molterer, former chancellor Franz Vranitzky and Education Minister Claudia Schmied. Diaspora Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog represented the Israeli government, standing alongside Austrian MPs, the Israeli and American ambassadors to Vienna and senior city officials. Also in attendance were three Viennese rabbis, including Austrian Chief Rabbi Paul Chaim Eisenberg, Bishop Michael Bünker of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Austria, the heads of the Jewish communities of Vienna, Salzburg and Linz and the leaders of German and Swiss Jewry. The message of the dedication of the community center, according to Herzog, is that "Jewish schools and education and connecting to Israel is the real answer to all those who want to increase anti-Semitism in the world, those who threaten Jewish learning institutions and synagogues with terrorism and seek in this generation to destroy the home of the Jewish people," he told The Jerusalem Post after the ceremony. The Viennese Jewish community has sought to regain possession of the former Hakoah land since the 1980s. Only in 2005 did the community succeed in purchasing 28 dunams of the land for the future complex. Named for one of the first Austrian Zionist rabbis, who is buried in Tel Aviv, the Chajes Jewish day school has 380 pupils from kindergarten through high school, but hopes to expand to 600. It is one of three Jewish day schools in Vienna, possessing a curriculum that combines secular topics, Hebrew and Jewish religious studies. All students travel to Israel before they graduate from the school.