Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

Wien
Venia
Wienne
Vindovina
Vídeň
Bécs
Beč
Beç
Dunaj

Founded around 500 BC, Vindobona Celtic/Gaulish windo- "fair/white/blessed", bona "base/bottom", was originally a Celtic settlement, and later a Roman military camp, on the site of the city of Wien.

During the Middle Ages, Wien was home to the Babenberg Dynasty.
After the first influx of Jews arrived in Wien in the late 12th century, 16 Jews were murdered by Christians, with the blessing of the pope.
In 1420, Duke Albrecht V expelled the Jews from Wien, confiscated their property, and destroyed their synagogue, using its stones to build the University of Vienna.
In 1440, it became the resident city of the Habsburg Dynasties, and eventually became the capital of the Holy Roman Empire.
In 1451, Jews were allowed to return to Wien, and were given special protection from the Hapsburg emperors.
Between 1485-1490, Wien was occupied by Hungary.

In 1529, and again, in 1683, the Ottoman armies were stopped outside Wien.

A second round of immigrants came to Wien from the Ukraine fleeing pogroms and persecution.
In 1624, Jews were granted their own quarter in Wien, later known as Leopoldstadt.

Under the reign of Maria Teresa,many discriminatory laws were passed, worsening the situation for Jews in Wien, but in 1782, Joseph II, Maria Teresa’s son and successor, lifted many of the restrictions.

In 1867, full citizenship rights were given to the Jews of Wien, leading to an influx of immigrants from the eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, especially Bukovina, Galicia, and Hungary.

In March 1938, Nazi Germany incorporated the Austrian Republic into the Anschluss.
Between 1933 and 1942, almost 130,000 people fled Austria in the aftermath of the annexation of Austria into the Reich and the application of the Nuremberg Laws. and, by May 1939, 100,000 people had already left Austria.
The Nazis quickly applied German anti-Jewish legislation to Wien.
Wien became the focal point of Jewish emigration from Austria.
They stood in long lines, night and day, in front of municipal, police, and passport offices, seeking exit visas and documentation neeeded for emigration, and were forced to pay an exit fee, and to register all of their immovable and most of their movable property, which was confiscated upon their departure.
Jewish community offices were closed, and the board members were sent to Dachau concentration camp.
By the summer of 1939, hundreds of Jewish-owned factories and thousands of businesses had been closed or confiscated by the government.

SS Captain Adolf Eichmann and Brigadier General Walter Stahlecker, later commander of a mobile killing unit, Einsatzgruppe A, Inspector of Security Police and SD in Wien, established a Central Office for Jewish Emigration.
By May 17, 1939, nearly half of Austria's entire Jewish population had emigrated.

On Kristallnacht, November, 1938, members of the Nazi party and its paramilitary organizations, including the SA and SS, were joined by civilians, without police interventions, to form mobs that torched most of Wien's synagogues and small prayerhouses, and ransacking and vandalizing Jewish businesses.
German police officials arrested some 6,000 Austrian Jews, transporting them to Dachau concentration camp, and a small number to Buchenwald concentration camp.

In the autumn of 1939, systematic mass deportations of the Viennese Jewish population began.
Some 1,500 Jews from Wien were transported, on Eichmann's orders, to the detention camp in Nisko.

On October 3, 1939, the steamship, S/S Uranus, sailed from Wien, carrying a group of Maapilim down the Danube River, until she was stopped at the Romanian border and forced to disembark.

In the winter of 1941, the Nazis transported approximately 4,500 Viennese Jews to Izbica, and other ghettos in the Lublin region, where most were later murdered.

In the spring of 1942, the Nazis transported thousands of Jews from Wien to Riga, Kovno, Vilna, and Minsk, in the occupied Soviet Union.
Thousands of Viennese Jews were also deported to the Lodz Ghetto and Theresienstadt.

In 1944, German SS and police officials, assisted by Hungarian gendarmes, deported tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews to Austria for forced labor.
Thousands of Hungarian Jews were imprisoned in Wien's Strasshof labor camp, where they worked building fortifications.
There were several forced-labor camps in Wien, under the administration of the Mauthausen concentration camp.

On April 4, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Wien.
Like Berlin, Wien was divided into four zones.
In May, 1955, the joint four-power arrangement formally ended.