Austrian Zionism and the Jews of the New Europe

Abstract

rom 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 (FPO) of Jorg Haider. The negotiations that followed were watched closely, and, when it became apparent at the end ofJanuary 2000 that the FPO would be part of the new government coalition, the reaction was as swift as it was predictable. On February 7, the treasurer of theJewish Agency, Chaim Chesler, called on all the Jews of Austria to immigrate to Israel immediately.' 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 hisjob.2 Moreover, theJewish 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 postwarJewish 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 ofJews from the Soviet Union who passed through the countty 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 theJewish 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 publica-