Historic Jewish Headstones Found in Vienna

VIENNA, AUSTRIA—In 1943, Vienna’s surviving Jewish community decided to bury historic headstones in the city’s oldest Jewish cemetery in order to save them from destruction by the Nazis. Hundreds of those stones, some of which date to the sixteenth century, have now been found with ground penetrating radar. So far, 20 headstones have been brought to the surface. Restoration of the neglected cemetery and its headstones is expected to take several years, and it “is totally comparable to the significance of the Jewish cemetery in Prague,” said Raimund Fastenbauer, a member of Vienna’s Jewish community.