05 February 2008

Sephardim in Vienna - Records and Graves - UPDATE

The Birth Register of the Vienna Turkish (Sephardic) Community has been completely indexed and is now online, thanks to Mathilde Tagger in Jerusalem. Many of these surnames originate in the Ottoman Empire, such as Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia.

Some were Ashkenazi, adds Tagger.

Data includes register page and row number, birth date, baby's surname/given names, sex, single birth/twin, both parents' surnames/given names, mother's birth dates/place, midwife's/mohel's full names. Some 1,440 births and some 4,650 individuals are named in these records.

The marriage register will be online soon, according to Tagger, with information on bride, groom, fathers and grandfathers. There are some 10,000 individuals in both the birth and marriage registers.

The searchable database is here. For more SephardicGen.com databases, click here.

In the SephardicGen introduction to this new database:

According to article #1 of the Passarowitz Peace Treaty signed between Charles VI, the Austrian Emperor and the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed Khan in 1718, free sojourn was granted to the respective subjects of the two countries. This is how Turkish Jews began to enjoy unrestricted movement in Austria. This regulation was again confirmed in the Peace Treaty of Belgrade in 1739.

Moses Lopez Pereira, also know as Baron Diego Pereira D'Aguilar, (Portugal 1699 - London, August 10 1759), held the tobacco monopoly in Austria from 1725 till 1747. Baron of the Holy Roman Empire, d’Aguilar enjoyed the greatest freedom of belief, and was the founder of the Spanish or Turko-Jewish community in Vienna. He succeeded in obtaining many concessions for the relief of his oppressed fellow worshippers.

The community was called “Turkish” because most of its members were indeed from Turkey. Its origins have to be placed in the years 1740-1750, when the Sephardim asked for a synagogue. The earliest Sephardic Jews living in Vienna had the following surnames: Camondo, Nissim, Eskenasy, Amar, De Mayo, Benveniste etc.

Austrian authorities published a document fixing the community's statutes in June 1778; known as Punkten (German) or Los Puntos (Ladino). Austria required the Turkish Jews to register birth, marriages and death. In 1909, the Turkish Community officially became a part of Vienna's Jewish community.

During Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass, November 9-10, 1938) the Turkish synagogue building and books were destroyed. Most of Austria's Jews perished in concentration camps.

The Family History Library (FHL) has recently added microfilms to their Jewish records in Vienna collection. One is titled "Turkische Israelitengemeinde – The Turkish Jewish Community."

For pictures of Sephardic gravestones, go to London researcher Celia Male's site, which holds 51 images, including maps, of Sephardic Graves - Vienna, Zentralfriedhof, which she photographed and researched.

In her photographs of Wahringer Cemetery, opened when the old Jewish cemetery was closed in 1784. "All inner-city cemeteries were closed for health reasons," she writes. Wahringer was then closed in 1879, when Zentralfriedhof opened.

Male has just sent me an update on her site, writing that there are 152 pictures and she is adding births and other data to the photos, as a sort of pictorial history.

To see the genealogy information related to a deceased's family, Male gives two examples: click here and here.

Additionally, she has also discovered a few links to photographs from other individuals who have found relatives' graves in her photographs.

The following family names are represented in Wahringer Cemetery:

ABINERI, ADOUT, ADUTT, ALBACHARY, ALBALAG, ALBINERI, ALFANDARI, ALKALAY, ALKANY, ALMULY, ALTARAC, ALTARAS, AMAR, ARDITI, ASCOLI, ASRAEL, BAZAR, BENMAJOR, BENSEF, BENVENISTI, BENZION, CAMONDO, CARMONA, CHAMEIDAS, CHARMATZ, COEN, COHEN, CONFINO, DANON, DAVID, DOMAJO, ELIAS, EPHRAIM, EPHRUSSI, EPRIM, ESKENASY, FARCHY, FINZI, GENTILI, GILIBAN, GISKON, HAIM, HAIES, HALFON, HASSAN, KALDERON, KAMCHI, KAPON, LEON, LEWE, LEWY, LEVI, De MAJO, MAJOR, NADLER, NACHMIAS, NISSIM, PARDO, RAPPOPORT, ROSANIS, ROSSANI, RUSSO, SABETEY, SALOMON, SEGALLO, SEMO, Del SOTTO, VENTURA, VENEZIAN, and WIDIUM.

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