Life was never easy for medieval Europe’s Jews, and pogroms and decrees of exile were common. Even so, while Vienna’s kehillah was preparing for Pesach in Nissan of 5180/1420 it had no idea that tragedy would strike before Yom Tov was over—or that it would be destroyed before the year was out.
At Home on the Judenplatz
Although there is evidence of a Jewish presence in Austrian territory as early as the third century CE, the story of Vienna’s kehillah begins only toward the end of the twelfth century. This was when the dukes of Babenberg, among the richest in Europe, made Vienna their home and the city grew in importance as a consequence. An early Jewish resident was a man named “Schlom” (mostly likely his name was actually Shlomo), who was the Master of the Mint to Duke Frederick I, and thus responsible for producing the land’s currency.
In the years that followed, many of Vienna’s Jews were tax collectors and moneylenders, although there were merchants and tradespeople as well. Most of them lived near the Judenplatz (Jewish Square), in a self-contained area comprised of about seventy houses. In addition to the synagogue and mikvah—remains of the medieval shul can still be seen today in the Jewish Museum Vienna—the community could boast of a Jewish hospital and a Jewish school.
Indeed, during the early Middle Ages Vienna was an important center of Torah scholarship. One of the greatest rabbanim of the thirteenth century was Rav Yitzchak ben Moshe of Vienna, also known as the Riaz, who authored the sefer Or Zarua. Rav Yitzchak was a talmid of several of the Tosafists of Ashkenaz (Germany), and he in turn was a teacher of Rabi Meir Baruch, known as the Maharam of Rothenburg, who became his generation’s most renowned rav.
A few centuries later, Rav Yisrael Isserlin, considered the last great medieval rav of Vienna, penned Terumat HaDeshen, a sefer that served as one of the Ashkenazi sources for HaMapah, Rav Moshe Isserles’s commentary on Shulchan Aruch.
A Precarious Existence
The 1300s were not a comfortable time to be a Jew in Europe. Although the Jews of Austria were not as hard hit as kehillos elsewhere in Germany by the persecutions that followed the appearance of the Black Death in 1349, there were a few accusations that the Jews had poisoned the wells, which led to massacres in towns such as Krems, Stein and Mautern. Vienna’s Jewish community was spared, however, and the city even became a place of refuge for Jews from other towns.
But there was yet another danger, and this one affected all of Austria’s Jews. Austrian dukes had the legal right to keep Jews and “public usurers,” and during the second half of the century they banded together to make a treaty that severely limited a Jew’s ability to flee from one duke’s territory and find refuge in another. Why might a Jew wish to flee? Although a duke could offer protection from an unruly mob, there was no one to protect Jewish moneylenders from a greedy duke. The only way a moneylender could escape from a duke’s attempt to extort a huge sum of money in the form of a loan, which might or might not be repaid, was to flee to a different duchy or country—and this is what the Austrian dukes wanted to stop. Should a Jewish moneylender decide to flee anyway, the kehillah left behind would become responsible for paying the duke the “loss” he had suffered.
More hardships occurred during the early 1370s, when all the Jews living in Austrian duchies were imprisoned and their property confiscated in an effort to convince them to convert. Fortunately, the bonds for the loans they held weren’t confiscated, and so when they were released from prison they were not entirely penniless.
By the end of the 1300s, the situation had improved—but that turned out to be just the calm before the storm.
Caught Between a Catholic and a Hussite
By the early 1400s there were about 800 Jews living in Vienna. The first blow to strike the community occurred in 1404, when the death of Duke Albert IV ushered in a period of political instability. On November 5, 1406, a mob set fire to Vienna’s synagogue, which had been one of the most beautiful in Europe. The mob then proceeded to loot Jewish homes and businesses.
Albert IV’s heir, Duke Albert V, was only seven years old when he assumed the title of Archduke of Austria. He didn’t actually rule Austria until seven years later, when he was all of fourteen years old. But even then the young duke wasn’t making all of his own decisions; he was heavily influenced by the leader of the Holy Roman Empire, Emperor Sigismund, who was also king of nearby Hungary and Bohemia and who later became Albert’s father-in-law.
Although by nature and by education Albert V was an enthusiastic Catholic, the events of the early 1400s turned him into a fanatical defender of his faith. A Czech priest by the name of Jan Hus had called for the reform of the Catholic Church, and he was burned at the stake in 1415 for heresy. That only encouraged his followers to continue the rebellion and soon the Hussite Wars were sweeping through Bohemia and Austria. Naturally, the Jews were caught in between.
Because the Hussites showed an interest in the Torah—some of the movement’s leaders even identified with biblical Israel and renamed their strongholds after places mentioned in the Bible—the Catholics accused them of being a Judaizing sect. And because some of the area’s Jews showed some sympathy for the Hussites’ cause, the Catholics accused the Jews of collaborating with the reformers in their fight against the Catholic rulers.
Albert V decided to send an army to help Sigismund fight the Hussites, but armies are expensive to maintain. He therefore imposed new taxes on the Jews and took out loans from Jewish moneylenders to fund his military campaigns. As the war dragged on, Albert’s debts to the Jewish moneylenders increased. When he realized that he would probably never be able to repay the loans, he turned to the solution used by so many other rulers before him: Get rid of the Jews and confiscate their property.
The Vienna Gezerah
Corrupt as a ruler may be, he stills needs an “excuse” to justify his behavior. Albert found his during Easter of 1420, which coincided with the first days of Pesach. A rumor began to spread throughout Vienna that several years earlier the wife of a church sexton living in Enns, a town in Upper Austria, had stolen consecrated hosts from a church and sold them to a local Jew named Israel. This Jew had then supposedly given the wafers to the other Jews living in Enns and they desecrated the hosts and made fun of the Catholic religion. Although the alleged desecration had taken place in the past, this was just the excuse that Albert needed. He ordered that Israel and his wife, along with other suspected Jews and the sexton’s wife, be brought to Vienna and imprisoned. While under torture, Israel confessed to the crime and the sexton’s wife was forced to “admit” that Jews from other towns also had participated in the desecration.
On May 24 the Jews of Austria were arrested and thrown into jail. The Jews of Vienna were held captive in their own homes. Instead of being tried by the Ducal court, which in theory might have been expected to give the Jews under its protection a fair trial, the Jews were tried by the City Court of Vienna. This court was no friend of the Jews, since the city’s burghers viewed them as unwelcome competition. Thus, it was no surprise that the court returned a verdict of guilty.
The poorer Jews were herded to the banks of the Danube and thrust into boats that lacked oars, leaving them at the mercy of the turbulent waters. The wealthy Jews were kept in prison and tortured to encourage their conversion to Christianity. Since the property of a baptized Jew automatically became the property of the duke, it was to Albert’s benefit to have as many Jews baptized as possible. Most, however, chose death rather than convert.
Jewish children were not spared. Although Pope Martin V, at the urging of Italy’s rabbanim, threatened to excommunicate anyone in Austria who forced Jews to convert, the threats weren’t heeded. The children were separated from their parents and taken to monasteries, where they were forcibly converted.
By March 12, 1421, only about 200 Austrian Jews were still alive—92 men and 120 women. They were taken to the “goose pasture” (Gänseweide) in Erdberg, located a bit south of the Vienna city walls, and burned at the stake. According to one account, the Jews approached the pyre while singing and dancing and died with the words of the Shema on their lips.
A Not So Eternal Ban
After the last of Austria’s Jews were murdered, Albert confiscated whatever Jewish property remained. The houses that had belonged to Vienna’s Jews were either sold or gifted by Albert to important residents of the city. Albert also demolished Vienna’s synagogue, which had been rebuilt after the fire of 1406, although not to its previous glory, and the building’s stones were used to build a university.
The story of the events of 1420-21 was recorded in a sixteenth-century manuscript called Vienna Geserah. This manuscript also relates a Massada-like story where some 300 Jews imprisoned in Vienna’s synagogue chose suicide over forced conversion, but some historians do not believe this actually occurred. Yet the other events were horrific enough and Austria became known as Eretz HaDaminah (The Land of Blood), while Vienna was given the name Ir HaDamim (The City of Blood).
Although the Jews were placed under an “eternal ban” meant to bar them from ever living in Austrian territory again, Frederick III, the first Holy Roman Emperor from the House of Hapsburg, canceled the ban in 1469. Frederick’s relations with his new Jewish subjects were so good that his enemies called him “more a Jew than a Holy Roman Emperor.” One place he could not resettle Jews was Vienna, which clung to its hatred and dubbed Frederick “King of the Jews,” before chasing him out of town.
There would continue to be periods of tolerance followed by persecution for the next 470 years. Eventually the Jews were allowed to return to Vienna, only to be deported in 1670. The Jews were allowed back during the 1700s. During the years 1848-1938, Vienna’s Jewish community reached the height of its prosperity and cultural influence. Then, in one of those ironies of history, March 12 once again became a day of tragedy.
On March 12, 1938, German forces entered Austria and annexed the country to the Nazi Third Reich. A day later, Adolph Hitler, yemach shemo, made a triumphant entry into Vienna, while the city’s Jews looked on with justifiable fear and dismay.
