If Marko Feingold is correct, the end of Salzburg’s Jewish community is at hand. Feingold, the leader of the local community, does not exude false optimism. “In 20 years, the community will be finished. Nobody wants to come here. In 20 years, we’ll have a very nice museum,” he said.
He is sitting at his desk, in the town’s 100-year-old renovated synagogue, the only one outside Vienna that holds regular services. He is 73, an Austrian by birth, and the survivor of numerous concentration camps. Until retiring 10 years ago, he was a garment factory owner. He is married, but he and his wife have no children.
Feingold is pessimistic about the community’s long-term viability for three reasons: most of its members are elderly, Parents send their children abroad to study, and newly arrived Russian Jews have no interest in living in Salzburg, a lovely place in the shadow of the Austrian Alps, and just minutes by car from the West German border.
Before the war, some 200 Jews resided in Salzburg. The Nazis burned down the synagogue and desecrated the cemetery. Long before that, Theodor Herzl practiced law here. After 1945, tens of thousands of displaced European Jews were sent to temporary camps in Salzburg.
Feingold says he helped many of them go to Palestine and, later, to Israel. He has no plans to leave Salzburg or Austria. “I’m comfortable here. And besides, it’s too late.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
