Memorial Leopoldtstadt Temple

On a quiet side street within easy walking distance from the Nestroyplatz Ubahn station once stood Vienna’s largest synagogue. On morning of 10 November 1938, the Nazis destroyed the Leopoldstadt Temple during Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass). Two-thirds of the Leopoldstadt Temple was burned to the ground on Kristallnacht.
Throughout Jewish Vienna, Nazis burned down 42 temples and places of worship "by throwing hand grenades inside or by setting fire to the furniture." In Leopoldstadt, the party mob fed a pyre with Torah scrolls, Talmud folios and prayer books for 40 hours and danced to shreds the Torah scrolls spread out next door.

Today in Jewish Vienna, the remaining section of the Leopoldstadt Temple is a Hebrew school. Tall white pillars have been erected where the main entrance to the synagogue once stood.

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Source

• Text: Raymond White
• Photos: Bwag
• Whitehousetravel.com