25. October 2017

Home despite all this

Volume 1 presents the history of the Mostviertel from the point of view of our Jewish compatriots.

A home despite all this was the Mostviertel for our Jewish compatriots in the districts of Amstetten, Melk and Scheibbs as well as in the Statutarstadt Waidhofen an der Ybbs. In this city founded the beating German national connections in 1890 the Waidhofner Association, which excluded all Jewish students from their connections. From 1920, the Anti-Semitic Alliance organized its network in the region. From Waidhofen also came one of the first enthusiastic supporters of Theodor Herzl, the Zionist Sigmund Kornfein. As editor of Die Stimme newspaper in 1947 he wrote: "We underestimated the bestiality of the enemy and overestimated the humanity, the wisdom and the sense of justice of our friends."

"The Jewish community in the Mostviertel"

To tell this forgotten story is an important personal concern for me. I turn to you first, dear Jewish families around the world, with ancestors who were rooted in this region and were forcibly snatched from their homes. I owe them the insight into the history of their families and the fate of their members. I want to tell you about all the other Jewish Mostviertelers who have belonged as members of the Ybbs / Amstetten Jewish community, about their survivors and their lost ones; I would like to introduce you to the far too few "righteous" Mostviertler, who, following their conscience, have stood by the persecuted.

"With Jewish compatriots in the Mostviertel"

If you come from a family that has lived in the Mostviertel for generations, you still have or have perceived your ancestors, how closely the Jewish fellow citizens were connected to their Christian neighbors and how violently these connections were cut. It is an indispensable part of our history that Jewish families were at home here and have lost their homeland under murderous circumstances.

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