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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/18831/full/18831/austria-losing-its-jewish-population/ <br /><br /> <b>Austria losing its Jewish population</b> <br /> Friday, November 15, 2002 | by <p>TOBY AXELROD </p> <br /><br /><p>BERLIN—Only a miracle will keep Austria's small Jewish community from shrinking away to nothing, according to the leader of Austrian Jewry.<br /><br /> Ariel Muzicant made the grim assessment at the dedication Sunday of a memorial to the tens of thousands of Jews deported by the Nazis from Vienna.<br /><br /> The memorial, located at Vienna's City Temple, has the names of 62,400 deportees engraved on black slate.<br /><br /> Some 65,000 Jews were deported from the city, but not all their names are known. Vienna also has a Holocaust memorial at Judenplatz.<br /><br /> The ceremony marked the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the pogrom of Nov. 9-10, 1938, when Nazi thugs ransacked Jewish-owned shops and set synagogues ablaze across Germany and Austria.<br /><br /> By the time the rampage ended, more than 1,000 synagogues in Germany and Austria had been destroyed. In the following days, several hundred Jews were killed or committed suicide.<br /><br /> Muzicant said at Sunday's ceremony that Austria's Jewish community, which now has between 7,000 and 8,000 members, is shrinking.<br /><br /> By comparison, Germany's postwar Jewish community has tripled to about 100,000 in the last 10 years, largely as a result of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union.<br /><br /> While Germany has opened its doors to Jewish immigrants in an attempt to rebuild lost communities, Austria has not done the same.<br /><br /> Muzicant, who is up for re-election to his leadership post on Nov. 24, repeatedly has asked the Austrian government to relax its strict immigration laws in order to rebuild the nation's Jewish community.<br /><br /> He voiced the hope Sunday that, in the future, not only memorials but also Jewish kindergartens and schools will be dedicated.<br /><br /> Among those at the dedication ceremony were the president of the National Assembly, Heinz Fischer, and Vienna's mayor, Michael Haupl.<br /><br /> Catholic Bishop Helmut Kratzl and Protestant Bishop Herwig Sturm also were present, as was Avraham Toledo, charge d'affaires of the Israeli Embassy in Vienna.<br /><br /> Vienna's chief rabbi, Chaim Eisenberg, called the memorial a symbolic gravesite for all those whose final resting place was not known.</p> <p> </p>

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