Jewish Welcome Service Vienna

Sponsored by the City of Vienna

Restart of the visitor program

The coronavirus pandemic meant that the visitor program, a focal point of the work done by the JWS, had to be canceled or heavily curtailed in the past two years. In May, a group of 30 people was hosted in Vienna. This marked a pleasing restart of this program.

At the reception of the group in Vienna City Hall: Municipal councilor Peter Florianschütz with Susanne Trauneck from the JWS – photo: PID/W. Schaub-Walzer

A group of 30 Jews visited Vienna from May 15 to 22 at the invitation of the Jewish Welcome Service. The guests came from the USA, Israel, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia. They included not only members of the “second generation”, but also the Holocaust survivors Diana Zelig (AUS), Silvia and Peter Last (USA) as well as Harry Kessler (UK). In addition to visits to important memorial sites, central places of Jewish life in Vienna, biographical research trips, and an invitation to Vienna City Hall, a number of members of the group recounted their fates to Vienna’s media.

from left: Wien Holding managing director Sigrid Oblak, Suzanne Hampel, Diana Zelig, Michelle Zelig, Susanne Trauneck (JWS), and municipal councilor Peter Florianschütz (photos PID/W.Schaub-Walzer)

© PID / Walther Schaub Walzer

The group at the Shoah Wall of Names memorial site … (photo Trauneck/JWS)
… in Ostarrichi Park, Vienna (photo JWS/Trauneck)
In the Jewish Museum Vienna (photo JWS/Trauneck)
At the reception in Vienna City Hall (photo PID/W.Schaub-Walzer)
  • Forget the Past – Diana Zelig recounts in “Furche” about her childhood in Vienna and the difficulty of remembering
  • A much too short childhood in Vienna – Harry Kessler reports in the magazine “News” about his adventurous escape from the Nazis (in German)