Guided tours of Währing Jewish Cemetery will also be offered in English from mid-December. The excursions are held once a month on the rare days the old cemetery is open.
The association “Rettet den Jüdischen Friedhof Währing” opens the cemetery grounds on the second Sunday of each month (except Jewish holidays) from 10 am to 4 pm. Guided tours on these days are conducted in German and from now on in English as well. Booking for the tours is essential.
Information on open days and bookings for the German-language tours can be found here. The English-language excursions take place at 12 noon on the open days. Bookings for the English-language tours: fuehrung@jued-friedhof18.at.
Participation in the excursions costs €8 per adult. Meeting point: Schrottenbachgasse 3, 1180 Vienna.
The Jewish cemetery in Vienna’s Währing district is considered extremely significant in terms of its cultural history, which dates back to 1784. At that time, all cemeteries within Vienna’s city walls had to be closed for reasons of hygiene. The Jewish Community subsequently acquired a plot of land next to the existing Währing General Cemetery and opened a new Jewish cemetery, which was later expanded several times with the purchase of additional plots of land. Over time, up to 30,000 people were buried in the cemetery.
The Währing Jewish Cemetery was officially closed with the completion of the Jewish section at the Vienna Central Cemetery in 1879. The neighboring Christian cemetery in Währing was closed in the 1920s, while the Jewish cemetery remained, but increasingly took on a park-like appearance. The Nazis later expropriated the cemetery, destroyed many graves during the construction of an air-raid shelter and stole some of the bones for “racial research”.
After 1945, the Währing Jewish Cemetery was restituted to the Jewish Community, but part of the site was retained by the City of Vienna. The “Arthur-Schnitzler-Hof” was later built at the location, since when several hundred graves have been located under its parking lot. Today, the non-profit association “Rettet den Jüdischen Friedhof Währing” takes care of the site, though the available funds are barely sufficient for its maintenance.
Source and all photos on this page:
Jennifer Kickert / Siegenfeld & https://jued-friedhof18.at/
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