Vienna
Austrian Jewish sports club regains former glory
Hakoah opens new sports hall on site of facilities that were confiscated by the Nazis in 1938. Club president complains Jewish community had had to wait so long to see Hakoah's grounds finally restored
VIENNA - Hakoah, Austria's biggest Jewish sports club, has opened a new sports hall in Vienna's Prater park on the site of facilities that were confiscated by the Nazis when Germany annexed Austria 70 years ago.
The "Karl Haber Sport and Leisure Centre" is a state-of-the-art multi-purpose hall with its own running track, tennis courts, swimming pool, solarium, fitness room, cafe and restaurant and creche.
And it was officially inaugurated on Tuesday evening on a 20,000-square-metre piece of land next to the Ernst Happel Stadium in the Vienna's green lung to mark the 70th anniversary of the "Anschluss" on March 12.
The land was given back to the Austrian capital's Jewish community in 2002 under the so-called Washington Agreements covering the restitution of Jewish property stolen by the Nazis.
The centre, designed by Austrian architect Thomas Feiger, has been named after Karl Haber, member of Hakoah (which means "strength" in Hebrew) before World War II who campaigned to have the grounds given back to the Jewish community after the war.
The centre's building costs of 7.5 million euros (11.5 million dollars) have been shared by the state and by the city of Vienna.
Alongside the sports grounds are a retirement home and a Jewish school.
'Case of Hakoah is typical of Austria'
Up until the annexation of Austria by Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, around 180,000 Jews lived in Vienna, forming an integral part of the city's intellectual, artistic and scientific life.
Hakoah regularly attracted crowds of up to 25,000 to its stadium in the Prater.
The club was set up in 1909 after Vienna's sports clubs banned Jews as anti-Semitism spread. It grew into the country's biggest athletic club, with about 5,000 members.
Its soccer team was Austria's national champion in 1925.
Some of its prominent members were champions in other disciplines, including swimmers Hedi Bienenfeld-Wertheimer and Fritzi Loewy, medal-winners in the European championships of 1928; wrestler Niki Hirschi, who won two Olympic medals in Los Angeles in 1932; water polo player Friedrich Torberg; and footballer Bela Guttmann, who played in MTK Budapest and became a successful trainer in the 1950s and 1960s.
Hakoah's grounds were "aryanised" by the Nazis in 1938 and its name was officially erased from Vienna's books in 1941. Immediately after the war, the club was refounded, even if it failed to recapture the glory of its pre-war years, not least because only 6,000 Jews were left in Vienna after the Holocaust.
Hakoah now has some 300 members, but club president, Karl Haber's son Paul, was confident that membership will increase "thanks to the new facilities and the proximity to the Jewish school."
In an interview with AFP, Haber complained that the Jewish community had had to wait so long to see Hakoah's grounds finally restored.
"The case of Hakoah is typical of Austria," he said. "Officially, after the war, Austria liked to portray itself as Hitler's first victim.
"And restitution would have meant that Austria was guilty," Haber said.
