Galicia in Vienna: Jewish Refugees in the First World War

Abstract

The arrival in Vienna of over one hundred thousand Jewish refugees fleeing the Russian army's advance into Galicia and Bukovina in the first months of World War I had a profound impact on Viennese Jewry. The refugees became a constant and pervasive theme of wartime Jewish debate in Vienna, and their influence was felt in many areas of communal life—political, cultural, economic, and religious. Moreover, their very visible presence in the city served to highlight the always prominent “Jewish Question” in Vienna for Jews and non-Jews alike, precipitating an eruption of virulent anti-Semitism that initially targeted the refugees but was later directed at Viennese Jews in general. (Indeed, one Jewish newspaper commented in September 1917 that anti-Semitism had become a “national sport.”) As the welfare problem posed by the refugees developed into a highly charged issue in Viennese politics, welfare work also became an important arena of Jewish politics.