The Foreign Service Journal, May 2016

88 MAY 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Israelit Friedhof: A Forgotten Cemetery in Vienna BY J E F FREY GLASSMAN REFLECTIONS Jeffrey Glassman is a recently retired FSO. During a 27-year career, he served at the U.S. Missions to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the United Nations, as well as in Monrovia, Cape Town, Moscow and Minsk. Photo by StudioTheresa Bentz, Vienna. U nknowing, Vienna Tri-Missions employees drove by it every day on the Wahringer Gurtel, high up behind a 40-foot stone wall. It was on the regular route between the embassy and the Mission to the OSCE, where I worked. When I first arrived in Vienna in August 2004, I struggled to make sense of the maze of streets. My initial goal was simple: to drive from the mission to the embassy without becoming one with the ubiquitous Vienna streetcars. To that end, I intensely studied the Freytag & Berndt BuchplanWien , an excel- lent map of the city known in our family as “the orange map.” On the lower third of page 20, in painfully tiny print, it showed the location of Israelit Friedhof (Jewish cemetery). As an American Jew working in Vienna, I was intrigued. I was aware of the schizophrenic attitude the Viennese have toward their Jews. Some of the highest points of Jewish life and accomplish- ment occurred in Vienna. The names are familiar: Theodor Herzl, Sigmund Freud, Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler, Arthur Schnitzler, Arnold Schoenberg. The low When I passed through the ancient wooden gates, I sensed I had entered a place sacred yet wild. The silence was unexpected. points are also well known. After the Anschluss, when Hitler appeared on the balcony of the Hofburg Palace on March 15, 1938, thousands of Viennese cheered the Fuhrer. Before the war, Vienna had been home to almost 200,000 Jews. Many of them fled; 65,000 lost their lives as part of Hitler’s Final Solution. The current Jewish population of Vienna is under 10,000. The Israelit Friedhof, also known as the Wahringer Cemetery, was the chief place of Jewish burial from 1784 to 1879. After 1880, Jews were buried in a section of Vienna’s Central Cemetery, where Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms are also buried. As I became aware of the cemetery, I wanted to see it. My family attended the Stadttem- pel, the only synagogue in the city that survived the Nazis (only because they feared burning it to the ground would endanger other parts of central Vienna). When I asked at the Stadttempel if I could go to the cemetery, I was told that nobody goes there. It’s been closed since the war. Naturally, that mademe even more eager to go. In the winter of 2007, the Stadttem- pel announced that there would be a one-time tour of Wahringer Cemetery. The tour would be led by historian Tina Walzer, who has made its study her life’s passion. “Great,” I thought. But almost immediately, I was told I couldn’t go: The cemetery was so overgrown that my wheelchair would not be able to traverse its narrow, rutted paths. I was undeterred. On the day of the tour, my wife and I showed up at the cemetery at the appointed time. It was a typical winter day in Vienna: raw cold and overcast, with the clouds seemingly inches above our heads. I had been warned about the condition of