150th Anniversary of the Klosterneuburg Jewish Cemetery

On Thursday 19 September 2024, three events will be held to mark the 150^th anniversary of the Jewish cemetery in Klosterneuburg.

The cemetery, which has existed since 1874, covers an area of approx. 4,000 square metres and contains 652 graves. It was fully restored with the financial support of the Fund for the Restoration of Jewish Cemeteries in Austria (Cemeteries Fund) and released to the local authority for long-term upkeep in 2020.

On the morning of 19 September, Rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister will hold a commemorative service at the Jewish Cemetery gate, which will also be attended by the Abbot of Klosterneuburg Abbey. This will be followed by a joint viewing of the cemetery. In the afternoon, historian Barbara Weiss will offer a special tour of the Klosterneuburg Jewish cemetery entitled “150 years of family history(ies)”.

In the evening, there will lectures delivered with the theme “Messages of Life”. They will be followed by a panel discussion in the Abbey’s Augustinus Hall, in which Hannah Lessing, Director of the National Fund and Cemeteries Fund, Michael Haider, Member of the Advisory Board of the Cemeteries Fund, and Wolfgang Gasser, historian at the National Fund, will shed light on the background and challenges of restoring the Jewish cemeteries in Austria and introduce the National Fund’s educational scheme on the Jewish cemeteries using Klosterneuburg as an example.

The project to renovate and secure the Jewish cemetery in Klosterneuburg. was carried out between 2017 and 2020 in three stages, and funded by the Cemeteries Fund and the Province of Lower Austria. The Cemeteries Fund covered three quarters of the project costs in the amount of ca. 600,000 euros, while the province of Lower Austria funded the remaining one quarter.

Now that the renovation is complete and the cemetery’s long-term upkeep secured, the National Fund’s next aim is to work together with existing initiatives such as the Committee for the Preservation of the Jewish Cemetery in Klosterneuburg to build on existing educational programmes, in order to anchor the Jewish cemetery more firmly in the collective consciousness.

The events are free of charge, those wishing to attend are requested to register at office@juedischerfriedhof.at.

Men are requested to wear a head covering at the cemetery.