1979/1981: The Murder of Heinz-Nittel – Attack on the City Temple

A number of the terrorist attacks that took place in Austria in the 1970s and 1980s were directed toward Jewish or pro-Israel targets.

In April 1979, a bomb exploded in the Vienna City Temple, located in the Seitenstettengasse. A Palestinian terrorist organisation confessed to the attack but the perpetrators were never caught. On May 1, 1981, the socialist Viennese City Councillor, Heinz Nittel, was murdered by Palestinian terrorists. He was, among other things, active with the Jewish Community of Vienna (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, IKG), pro-Israel, and he criticised Kreisky’s Middle East politics. In August, there was another Palestinian attack on the City Temple, which claimed lives and caused injuries. Two terrorists were caught and sentenced, as was their commanding officer who was also convicted of instigating the murder of Nittel. The life sentences would be reduced in later proceedings, namely, they were converted into an acquittal.

For the Jewish community, this attack was the “worst blow that it had suffered since the Second World War” (Chief Rabbi Eisenberg). Today, Jewish institutions in Vienna are under police protection. Kreisky’s reaction was regarded as controversial as he defended the PLO.

The attacks should be seen in the context of European-wide Palestinian terror attacks against Jewish institutions as well as in relation to growing anti-Semitism and Middle East politics, in which Austria was involved as a transit country that Soviet Jewish emigrants used to migrate to Israel.