The Jewish Population in Linz

Michael John

According to the census of 1900, there were 702 Jews living in Linz, a figure that rose to 931 in 1923 and fell to 671 in 1934. The census of 1954 counted 54 Jews in Linz, with the number of arriving “displaced persons” exceeding the total of those returning. From 1938 to 1945 the Jewish community was disenfranchised and expelled by the Nazis. Jews who could not leave the country in time died in the concentration camps of the Third Reich. In addition, those who were defined according to a racist ideology as “Jews” or were of “Jewish extraction”, but who did not belong to the Jewish religious community, were also persecuted. National Socialist policy and a certain degree of consent by the local population had led to this development. Adolf Hitler himself said at a dinner in 1941, while referring to the Jews of Munich, Linz and Vienna, that “he was happy that Linz, at least, was already completely judenfrei (free of Jews)”,a point which many of the city’s population could agree with . While there are proven cases of individual help for persecuted Jews, there was no opposition worth mentioning to the anti-Jewish National Socialist policies.