15th–17th centuries
Wiener Gesera
1421·Vienne (Autriche)
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
the Jews of Vienna burned at the Erdberg or drowned, children taken to be baptized, the synagogue razed
The Wiener Gesera ended in Vienna: the Jews of the duchy who had not been killed elsewhere were burned at the Erdberg, outside the walls, or drowned in the Danube; children were taken from their parents to be baptized, and the synagogue of the Judenplatz was razed to the ground.
Those who had been locked inside the synagogue took their own lives before the soldiers arrived, and the rabbi set it on fire. The stones of the building were used to construct the university, and Duke Albert V kept what he had seized.
The name Gesera, which means decree in Hebrew, is the one that the Jews of Germany gave to the affair; the Hebrew account that records it is one of the great mourning texts of Ashkenazi Judaism. The foundations of the destroyed synagogue have been uncovered beneath the Judenplatz and now form a museum.
- Period :
- 15th–17th centuries
- Type :
- Massacre
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Autriche
Lohrmann, Judenrecht und Judenpolitik im mittelalterlichen Österreich ; Dossier et récit hébraïque de la Wiener Gesera.