Austria: Conference and Exhibition on Jewish Associations and Societies in Vienna

Austria: Conference and Exhibition on Jewish Associations and Societies in Vienna, November 12-14, 2008
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) Perhaps as much as synagogues and prayer houses, Jewish associations and societies (Vereine) played an important communal, organizational and spatial role in European Jewish communities form the late 19th century until the Holocaust. Of course, some societies - such as those providing comfort for the sick and burial assistance - transcended nominal social and spatial borders between the religious and secular, the synagogal and domestic, and the public and private. These associations reached out and often included members of all strata of Jewish society, and their activities could embrace traditional and less observant Jews. To some extent this continues today in a smaller way, although the impact of associations on the communities remains strong. In Central and Eastern Europe, where most recognized Jews are not religiously observant, such associations help establish and maintain Jewish group identity.

A conference about Jewish Associations and Societies in Vienna will take place on November 12-14 in the former Vienna's Jewish community building at Herklotzgasse 21. Three presently active Jewish associations will be visited and will present their current work within an historical perspective. The participants of the conference will be guides through the exhibition "The Triangle of my Childhood. A Jewish Suburban community in Vienna."

The conference is organized by the research project "Herklotzgasse 21 and the Jewish Spaces in a Quarter of Vienna", in cooperation with the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute of Holocaust
Studies and the Jewish Community Vienna

Speakers at hte conference are: Evelyn Adunka, Gabriele Anderl, Brigitte Dalinger, Tamara
Ehs, Angelika Hausenbichl, Dieter Hecht, Gerald Lamprecht, Elisabeth Malleier, Georg Traska, Verena Pawlowsky

To register for the conference contact: office@herklotzgasse21.at
For more information: www.herklotzgasse21.at; Tel.: 0043-1-23676