In year 2000, employees of the Jewish Community of Vienna (IKG) made a startling discovery. In a vacant apartment in one of the community's tenement buildings in Vienna's 15th district they came upon dozens of wooden cabinets containing index cards, a pile of large-sized books reaching from the floor to the ceiling and 800 cardboard boxes filled with files and documents from IKG holdings.

New insight into the Holocaust: Documents missing over decades can be viewed for the first time within the framework of the exhibit, “Ordnung Muss Sein.”

Contemporary History. The Jewish Community of Vienna was the only one that recorded their own expulsion and deportation up until the end of the NS regime. The documents missing for decades are now being exhibited for the first time in Vienna. They are historically unique finds which offer new insights into the Holocaust.

Well-known researchers of National Socialism and the Holocaust invited as guests in Vienna for a conference held by the Vienna Chamber of Labor and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) from June 27 – 29.

In summer 1947 some 5,000 Jews succeeded in crossing the Krimmler Tauern into Italy. “Alpine Peace Crossing” will commemorate this historical event.

Vienna – Minister of Justice Maria Berger doesn’t exclude offering additional rewards for information leading to the capture of alleged NS criminals still at large.

The artist, Demnig, engraves the inscriptions of Nazi victims into metal plaques embedded into stone and then places the stone blocks in front of the last-known residence of the victim.

Vorarlberg. The Jewish Museum in Hohenems is considered one of the most innovative in Europe. Now it is on a new course.

From May 16 to November 18, 2007 the Jewish Museum Vienna (JMW) presents the exhibition, “Best of All Women. The Female Dimension in Judaism,” exploring the role of the Jewish woman in religious, economic, social and cultural contexts.

The focus of this year’s commemorative ceremony against violence and racism held in the Austrian Parliament on May 4, 2007 was on resistance against the National Socialist regime.

Ed Serotta, an American in Vienna, created the first virtual Museum of Jewish Everyday History in Central- and Eastern Europe

Polish-Austrian journalist Leon Zelman passed away in a hospital in Vienna at the age of 79 following a grave illness

The head of Vienna’s Jewish Welcome Service has passed away. As bridge-builder and as an exceptional figure, he is praised by all sides

Leaving a “Painful Gap” says Federal President Fischer

“When I studied mathematics in Vienna, the emphasis was on quite abstract subjects: on foundations of mathematics and mathematical logic; on fields like graph theory and combinatorial typology, and things like that. That was the atmosphere at that time, and these were the interesting subjects. Schlick was there in logic and philosophy, and Carnap was there. Goedel, whom we now call the foremost logician, was a student in Vienna, and he was a few years older than I. ”

Gerda Lerner, a researcher specialzed in women’s history, received the Bruno Kreisky Prize for her life-time achievements and the 2006 political book of the year. Federal Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer paid homage to the professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin (USA) in the festive hall of the Austrian National Library in Vienna. He praised her not only as a “doyenne and pioneer of women’s historiography” but as “the person devoting most efforts to the academic recognition and institutionalization of women’s historiography”.

Vienna – Saving Vienna’s Jewish Cemetery in Waehring appears to be moving closer to the day when it becomes reality. President of National Council Barbara Prammer said on the occasion of a visit to Israel that the board of trustees of the National Fund, responsible for NS restitution, will pave the way for the preliminary stage of the project this coming October.

The University of Vienna is investigating its role during the NS era. One aspect of it consists of making an inventory of their books stored in the book stacks.

Restitution. Researchers found thousands of looted books in the huge book stacks of the University of Vienna. Now the search begins for heirs. “More next time.” With these words, Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Elise Richter ended her lecture in March of 1938, one which proved to be her last. Two weeks later, the swastika hung on the façade of the Alma Mater Rudolphina. And “Miss Richter,” as the Neue Freie Presse once called the first woman ever to have received a PhD from an Austrian university, was expelled.

There is a lot of work awaiting the Restitution Advisory Council which last met in November, 2006. According to Werner Fürnsinn, head of the Commission for Provenance Research, some 35 dossiers have been presented to him for a decision. Ten to twelve cases are being reviewed today.