Life became very dangerous for Vienna’s 180,000 Jews in the days and weeks after Nazi Germany swallowed up Austria in March 1938. Jewish children were prohibited from attending school or playing in city parks. Fathers lost their jobs, while families were stripped of their life savings. Adolf Eichmann and his storm troopers carried out a punishing raid at Vienna’s Jewish Community offices, arresting its leaders and setting up an elaborate system aimed at ridding the city of its entire Jewish population. Today, the Vienna Jewish Community still operates out of the same building that it occupied in 1938. But the vibrant Jewish culture that once thrived in Vienna has all but vanished. Fewer than 7,000 Jews live in Vienna today -- a grim reminder of the 120,000 who managed to escape from the Nazi terror and the 65,000 Austrian Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust.

Vienna