Because of its mention in a couple of our sources (in Vienna Revisited by Freda Ulman Teitelbaum and in an article about Vienna in Hadassah Magazine), we made a stop in Eisenstadt on the way in to Vienna. We were surprised that, Eisenstadt, in the Hungarian part of the empire, Burgenland (where Haydn had written his symphonies for Esterhazy), had been 20% Jewish before the war. There was no evidence of that life there now.
We found the fenced-off Jewish cemetery
(across the street from the building that had been the local synagogue (but destroyed on Kristallnacht)):
opens only May to October.
It may indeed be the Austrian Jewish museum. We kept going in circles to find it (it was so poorly marked).
Despite the names Jerusalem/Judenplatz, and the presence of the museum, Eisenstadt is now empty of Jews except for (we were told) one Jewish man.
Perhaps it is an irony, but the musical city of Eisenstadt, which, while it has only one living Jew today, had the presence of the music of another Jew (at least temporarily) as well. In his day, his music was considered degenerate by those who eliminated 20% of the population. But, a performance of his work was scheduled for shortly after our visit.
Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht's Threepenny Opera:
