General information on Jewish Cemeteries in Austria

Jewish cemeteries are special places of remembrance and many of them are of particular cultural and historical value. During the National Socialist era, countless graves were destroyed, the names of the dead extinguished.

For many decades after the expulsion of the Jewish communities and the murder of their members, the Jewish cemeteries in Austria were left to fall to ruin. It is only in places where Jewish communities were re-established after 1945 that the cemeteries are still used today – all others are closed.

Starting in 2001, systematic records were made of all of the Jewish cemeteries in Austria. The Jewish Community Vienna commissioned the historian Tina Walzer to catalogue the cemeteries in a "White paper on the condition of the Jewish cemeteries in Austria and necessary renovation work", which was updated in 2008.

Additionally, during the last ten years the Federal Office for the Protection of Monuments has made a record of the cemeteries and examined whether they are worthy of being heritage sites. The Sec. 2a-Ordinance of the Federal Office for the Protection of Monuments (which does not, however, list cemeteries which are privately owned) lists 61 cemeteries.

The cemeteries contain between 10 and several hundred graves, the headstones date from the 15th century into the 20th century.

Distribution of the Jewish cemeteries in Austria known to date (as at 2012):

Federal province	Number of Jewish cemeteries
Lower Austria	28
Burgenland	14
Vienna	5
Styria	5
Upper Austria	4
Tyrol	2
Carinthia	1
Salzburg	1
Vorarlberg	1