I am very sorry that, because of illness, I am unable to present my remarks in person on this day when we are celebrating the  opening of the Museum of Austrian History. As was noted by the speakers before me, the Museum  traces the history of Austria over the past 100 years.  In view of this history, I find it remarkable, and uplifting that it is opening exactly in the same year as the 80th anniversary of the Anschluss, and on the very same spot, on Heldenplatz, where Hitler made his triumphant entrance and was embraced by the Austrian population.  The warm embrace by Austria of the Nazi ideology has, until recently, not been acknowledged, and has been for me the source of my ambivalence toward Austria.  The November 1938 Progrom heralded the beginning of a new period of anti-Semitic persecution.  

The opening of the Museum of Austrian History, especially because it is on Heldenplatz, makes it a very personal event for me.  As you know, I am a Jew and was born in Vienna on November 7, 1929, almost exactly on today’s date. I was 8 years old when Hitler marched on Heldenplatz. Hitler stood on the balcony, in the very same building that is now the Museum, and proclaimed the Anschluss on March 15, 1938 in front of 200.000 hysterically cheering Austrians.  This is why it is so important that, as an extremely significant space, the balcony should be made accessible and included into the Museum. Within a few days of the Anschluss, the lives of Jews in Vienna were dramatically changed. I remember vividly how my father was forced to wash the street in front of his store with a toothbrush.  How the father of my best friend, Kurt, told him never to speak to me again.  Within one year, I left for the United States, together with my brother and without our parents. Our parents followed six months later.

Why do I remember these events so vividly? My work as a neurobiologist  provides some answers.  I found that, when a person remembers something for a long time, it is because profound changes have taken place in that person’s brain.  It comes as a great surprise for people to learn that memory is established because the brain grows new synaptic connections, that is the brain makes new anatomical structures that connect cells to one another.  Traumatic events produce particularly significant changes in the brain.  This is why we remember them so well. After listening and remembering the words of the speakers today, your head will be different. And, so will it continue to change as you go through the exhibits of this wonderful museum. You, as a beholder of text and images, will be different.  And, since practice makes perfect, the more often you will visit the Museum, the greater the changes in your brain and the impact that the exhibits will have on you.

But, I want to turn to another issue.  This is the issue of the state of the Jewish population in Vienna today. I am reminded of a book written by Hugo Bettauer, a journalist who, while still in his teens, converted from being a Jew to being a Protestant. In 1922, Bettauer wrote a novel entitled Vienna, the City without Jews.  It portrays a Vienna of the future that, in response to pressure from the city’s leaders, tries to expel all its Jewish citizens. As a result of this action, the city’s economic base crumbles and its social life deteriorates. Eventually, everyone in the city is complaining about how the quality of life has deteriorated. Attendance at the Opera house decreases and business in the more elegant department stores declines.  Viennese girls pine for their Jewish boyfriends, who showered them with presents and always behaved well and never drank too much.  As a result, the city fathers were desperate . They had no choice; they had to beg the Jews to come back. 

In 1925, a young man named Otto Rothstock walked into Bettauer’s office with a gun and killed him. Although Rothstock apparently acted under his own initiative, he had been a member of the Nazi party in earlier days. In fact, the leaders of the Nazi party took up Rothstock’s defense.

Since the beginning of the second world war, the number of Jews in Germany and Austria has continued to decline, as it has declined in the rest of Europe.  The Jewish population in Europe dropped from 9.4 million in 1939 to 1.4 million in 2010.  In 1939, 50% of the world’s Jews lived in Europe.  By 2010, only 10% of Jews did so. 

One of the reasons for the continued decline of the European Jewish population is the existence of Israel, which is, obviously, very attractive for Jews. There is, however, a big difference between Germany and Austria.  Germany has made a conscious effort to bring Jews back and to reconstitute its Jewish community. There were 505,000 Jews living in Germany in 1933 (0.75% of the population); by 1945 there were only 19,000. But Germany brought Jews in from Eastern Europe to increase their number. By 2010, the Jewish population of Germany had increased to 119,000, or .14% of the total population. At the beginning of the 21st century, Germany has the only growing Jewish community in Europe.  State and local governments compete with each other in building magnificent synagogues, Jewish schools and other facilities.

The situation in Austria is very different. In 1933, there were about 191,000 Jews living in the country or 2.8% of the population. This proportion was four times higher than in Germany. Following its occupation by Nazi Germany in 1938, most of the Jewish community immigrated or was killed in the Holocaust. The Jewish population of Austria declined to 9,000 persons officially registered in 2010. Thus, the proportion of Jews went from 2.8% of the total Austrian population in 1933 to .10% in 2010.  In Germany, the Jewish population today is 18.7% of its size in 1933.  In Austria, it is even smaller; it is only 3.4% of what it was. The contrast is startling. While West Germany’s small Jewish population is growing, Austria’s much smaller population is declining. I believe strongly that strategies should be implemented to bring Jews into Austria or to keep here those who come here to study, but then cannot stay, such as graduates of the Lauder Business School.

 One of the most encouraging changes that one sees in Austria is the reduction in anti-Semitism.  By the mid-1980s, the government began to discourage anti-Semitism. It commissioned a film on the Mauthausen Concentration Camp and a school text on Jewish history. From 1982 to 1986, the government disbanded 5 organizations and forbade 30 events believed to have pro-Nazi overtones.  Vienna even named a small park after Sigmund Feud. In 2012, The Dr.-Karl Lueger-Ring, named for the very accomplished but also very anti-Semitic former mayor of Vienna, was renamed Universitätsring. I am proud that I had a role in this change. But many individuals in Vienna made this happen. The process started when I spoke to Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, when he was in the US, about a potential renaming of that section that fronted the University of Vienna. Fayman asked his then Secretary of State, Josef Ostermayer, to talk to the Mayor of Vienna, Michael Häupl, who in return asked Heinz Engl, the Rector of the University of Vienna, to officially write a letter of support for renaming the Karl-Lueger-Ring as Universitätring. In the background, the then President Heinz Fischer assisted as well. The renaming was approved. The City Councillor for Cultural Affairs, Andreas Mailath-Pokorny, executed the renaming in April 2012.

To emphasize the importance of memory, of remembering the past persecution of Jews,  stones of remembrance have been embedded in the pavement in front of houses where Jews once lived. A plaque was also placed on the façade of the apartment house on Severingasse 8, where my parents, my brother and I lived, to remind passers-by that Hermann, Charlotte, Ludwig and Erich Kandel once lived there but had to leave.  I participated this past April in the very moving ceremony, when the plaque was unveiled.  Many people, Jews as well as non-Jews, came to celebrate this act of remembrance.

The city also contributes quite generously to the maintenance of various Jewish institutions, including the upkeep of the Jewish cemetery.

The Austrian government has played a critical role in the revival of Jewish life, and this life has revived.  The Jewish community puts on lectures, exhibitions and concerts.  It operates a home for the elderly, a cultural center, and a variety of institutions for children and young people. Moreover, there is public recognition of the accomplishments of many individual Jews. […]

As I mentioned earlier, Austria once had a much higher percentage of Jews than any other Western European countries. This is no longer the case. Austria has truly become a country with very few Jews. This is a great disappointment for two reasons.  First, Austria has much to gain from the intellectual ambition and physical energy of Jews. Second, Jews have much to gain from living in Vienna.

This new museum offers Austria an important opportunity to confront its darker eras.  For the museum to be an honest institution, it must explicitly and thoroughly include the history of anti-Semitism that stains Austria.  Yes, the museum does not shy away from this part of Austria’s past.  Only by openly confronting the problematic aspects of its history, can Austria hope to avoid similar episodes in the future.  Let us hope that residents of Austria can see Jews not just as a historical culture in the museum, but as a vibrant sector of its community.

I very much like coming back to Vienna, enjoying the art, the beauty of the city, and the many friends I have made here over the years. My feelings have evolved from bitterness, anger and distrust to acceptance and reconciliation. I have tried to contribute to the scientific revitalization of Austria by advising several scientific research centers and institutes that have evolved into first- rate world institutions.

Furthermore, I can now merge my scientific and aesthetic goals in Vienna, and do so with respect to memory, which is so important to us on this day. I have recently been studying age-related memory loss.  I have found that one of the best ways to combat age-related memory loss is through walking. Walking releases a hormone from bones called osteocalcin and osteocalcin reverses age-related memory loss.

There are very few cities in the world that match Vienna in encouraging walking. Vienna is the stroller’s paradise. And, stroll in Vienna I shall continue to do as I return to enjoy the city, the new Museum of Austrian History, and my Viennese friends.