Vanishing Vienna: Reflections on Absence after Genocide

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This paper examines the experiences and repertoires of Jewish popular performers who returned to Vienna from far-flung places of exile after 1945. Popular performance was one of the only arenas where Viennese Jews successfully reclaimed their pre-Nazi prominence. At the same time, their performances provided spaces of confrontation with Jewish absence and the long-term cultural consequences of the Holocaust. Despite ongoing antisemitism, Jewish refugees and remigrants collaborated on cultural reconstruction and also became objects of intense fascination in the postwar period.

Presented by the Center for Austrian Studies, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and the Department of History.