Austria Jewish Records

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For information regarding Jewish persons in Austria during the Holocaust please check Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes.

List of People Expelled from the University of Vienna in 1938 It was reported on JewishGen that the University of Vienna has published a database of 2,700 persons, mostly Jews, who were discharged or expelled in 1938. Among these persons are professors, students and employees of the university. This database is available at http://gedenkbuch.univie.ac.at.

http://www.iajgs.org/cemetery/austria/index.html

http://www.jewishgen.org/AustriaCzech/towns/gundframe1.html

www.jewishgen.org/austriaczech/ausguide.htm

Jewish Records of Vienna
When Poland was partitioned among its neighbors in 1795, the Austrian Empire (later the Austro-Hungarian Empire) received the southeastern portion of the country heavily populated by the Jews, which it named Galicia. Since internal boundaries did not exist within the Austrian Empire, many impoverished Galician Jews migrated to the capital, Vienna. '''By the end of the 19th century, Vienna had become a major center of European Jewry. On the eve of World War II, it had the third largest Jewish population in Europe''' (after Warsaw and Budapest).

Jewish genealogists with roots in Galicia should look for family branches in Vienna, especially if the family name was relatively uncommon. This task is made easier by two large collections of records available from the Family History Library, the Jewish birth, marriage and death records up to 1939 and the invaluable collection of residency books (Meldezettel). For more information about Viennese Registration see Fall 2000 (Volume XVI, Number 3) issue of Avotaynu. (Family History Library INTL book 296.05 Av79).

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Jewish community of Vienna deposited the majority of its records with The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP). The collection includes material dealing with the religious, community and government matters from the 17th to the 20th century (up to 1945), but mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection does not have birth, marriage or death records. Material of genealogical value may be found in voters' lists, taxpayers' lists, lists of potential 1930s emigrants, lists of deportees and a complete list of the Jews in Vienna in 1939.

A detailed inventory of more than 400 pages, written in German, is posted on the Archives' website. The inventory has a detailed table of contents (Aktenverzeichnis) and is divided into two main sections- up to the Anschluss (annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938) and following the Anschluss. From the home page, click on "Examples of Holdings/Countries". When under Austria, click on the link "Vienna, Jewish community archives (1648-1970)."

Additional websites: Austrian Holocaust Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

For more information on Jewish Records of Vienna including a case study see an article Resources for Records of Vienna by by George Arnstein, Hadassah Assouline and Sallyann Amdur Sack, published in the Avotaynu, Volume XX, Number 1, Spring 2004. (Family History Library INTL book 296.05 Av79).