10 years of city tours on Vienna's Jewish history as part of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education’s Vienna programme
Since 2015 the OeAD programme ERINNERN:AT’s tour ‘Life and Expulsion of the Jewish Population in Vienna’ has been an integral part of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education (BMB)’s Vienna programme. The city tour teaches young people about the history of Vienna's Jewish population and their expulsion during National Socialism. Every year more than 1,500 pupils from all over Austria take part. Since its inception more than 11,000 young people from all federal provinces have explored Vienna’s Jewish history and the causes and consequences of the Holocaust in Leopoldstadt in this way.
To mark the anniversary the Ministry of Education invited participants to a discussion and city tour on 16 September 2025 together with the OeAD and the HTBLVA Anichstraße from Innsbruck.
The minister of education Christoph Wiederkehr says: ‘Offers such as this are essential components of Austrian remembrance culture. As a learning venue outside school it offers young people low-threshold and direct access to Vienna's Jewish history and promotes awareness of antisemitism, exclusion of those who think differently and discrimination of all kinds, which are dangerous for any society and must therefore be resolutely rejected.’
The two-hour tour – together with Doris Wagner, head of department of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education (BMB) – takes participants through the 2nd district to places that represent Jewish life before 1938 as well as exclusion, persecution and murder during the Nazi era. The OeAD programme ERINNERN:AT (REMEMBER:AT)’s educational team actively involves the pupils in the tour: by means of photographs and memories of Holocaust survivors the young people link specific places with life stories and historical events. Besides imparting knowledge the aim is to perceive and research historical traces in their own environment. Contemporary Jewish life in Vienna is also discussed.
‘With the tour of the 2nd district we want to show pupils where and how the victims of National Socialism are remembered and what traces of history can still be found today. The memorials remind us where antisemitism and extremism can lead and how important it is to stand up for democracy and human rights,’ emphasises Jakob Calice, managing director of the OeAD.
On the occasion of the commemorative year 1945–2025 the Ministry of Education and the OeAD celebrate the tenth anniversary of this successful collaboration. 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the liberation from National Socialism and the re-establishment of a democratic Austria. The OeAD programme ERINNERN:AT dedicates its annual focus to the theme ‘End of the war. Liberation. A new beginning?’. The city tour is part of this initiative.
Further information about the Vienna programme: https://www.bmb.gv.at/Themen/schule/schulpraxis/pwi/wien/wienaktion.html
Further information about the tour and the OeAD's annual focus: https://www.erinnern.at/bundeslaender/wien/artikel/rundgang-wien-leben-und-vertreibung-der-juedischen-bevoelkerung-in-wien and https://www.erinnern.at/themen/jahresthema-2025-80-jahre-kriegsende-befreiung-neuanfang
