Educational Programmes

We offer pupils a journey in time to sites in Vienna connected with Jewish history and to people who played a role, however large or small, in this history. A journey from the Middle Ages to the present …

We have listed the educational programmes on Jewish history below. They are all free of charge for school and student groups. You can also combine programmes at different venues.

Programmes

So many synagogues!

(Primary school and secondary school up to 12 years)
A history programme for very young pupils, ideally combined with a guided tour of the synagogue in Seitenstettengasse, the only Jewish house of prayer not to have been destroyed in November 1938. The Visible Storage Area in the Museum contains the remnants of Jewish Vienna. The objects come from Viennese synagogues and prayer houses and “relate” their history. To provide a better understanding, the pupils are asked to stick pictures of the synagogue onto a modern map of Vienna.
Jewish Museum Vienna

Jewish Vienna — an approach

(Age 14+)
The Museum’s historical installation takes an unusual and novel approach without real artefacts but with 21 holograms to relate the complex history of Jewish Vienna from the Middle Ages to the first expulsion, from the ghetto to assimilation, from the Shoah to the present.
There are three educational programmes available using different methods:
- The individual holograms are examined in detail and presented in small groups with the aid of worksheets. Additional information for research is provided.
- “History/herstory” links stories and invention. The pupils are called on to find the hologram associated with real or invented stories.
- “Welcome Vienna” makes the pupils into city guides. In small groups they select their favourite hologram, research it and then organise a guided tour for five different Jewish groups: a Jewish school class, American tourists from Florida who lived in Vienna until 1939, a rabbinical seminar, Israeli soldiers, and members of a German-Jewish choir on a concert tour.
Jewish Museum Vienna 

Kurt and Ilse (don’t) survive in Vienna

(Age 14+)
Using photos of objects from the Jewish Museum Vienna archive the pupils work up the biography of Kurt and Ilse. Both lived in Vienna from 1938 to 1945 but failed to survive. Historical core data are investigated together with their daily life. The pupils are not initially told that the two children failed to survive. The photos should be put in chronological order and in small groups the participants then work out how the story of Kurt and Ilse might end …
The programme can be booked as a writing workshop with the end of the story being written down by the pupils.
Jewish Museum Vienna

A box full of memories

(Age 14+)
This box exhibited in the Museum has the following inscription: “Dr. Franz and Anna Bial / deported on 27 May 1942 / 3rd package / daughter Lilly Bial, born 1926 / emigrated to England in 1939.” Lilly, the daughter of Franz and Anna, travelled to England in 1939 with a children’s transport. Her parents were deported to Minsk on 27 May 1942 and died there. Lilly Bial was not located again until 2004. She left most of the objects in the box to the Jewish Museum Vienna to commemorate her own story and that of her parents. She died in summer 2007. The education programme offers an intensive confrontation with the history of Jewish Vienna and particularly with Lilly’s story. The pupils are required to write a letter to the Museum and to consider what they would have kept from the box if they had been Lilly …
Jewish Museum Vienna

ok, dobre, ciao!

(Age 15+)
A variation on the education programme “Interview with an object” in which the pupils are confronted on the basis of photos with objects from the permanent exhibition and possibly with exhibits from temporary exhibitions. The objects are used to provoke discussion, to think, relate, talk and exchange ideas about belonging, homeland, flight, exile, etc.
Jewish Museum Vienna

Revisiting history — in memory of the November 1938 pogrom

(Age 14+)
After an introduction in the Jewish Museum Vienna Visible Storage Area, the pupils visit Seitenstettengasse 4, Morzinplatz and Tempelgasse 5. They revisit history and discover the chronology and impact of the events of 10 November 1938 in Vienna.
Jewish Museum Vienna 

Dear Henny

(Age 14+)
In this programme the pupils meet two people whose correspondence has been in the Jewish Museum Vienna since May 2008. There are over 200 items relating the story of Henriette Rokeach and Ignaz Feuerlicht, both of whom lived in Vienna until 1939 and emigrated in different directions. Henriette was a pupil at Zwi Perez Chajes Gymnasium, Ignaz Feuerlicht her teacher. The letters continue until 1944. What happens next? Is there a happy ending?
Jüdisches Museum

1938 — remembrance/commemoration

(Age 15+)
This programme links historical Jewish sites in Vienna with a visit to the Jewish Museum Vienna. The tour starts at the synagogue in Seitenstettengasse and continues via Morzinplatz to Judenplatz. The memorial by Rachel Whiteread forms the link to the museum programme: the pupils are given photos and asked to find situations in the permanent exhibition that recall the Shoah. They discover in this way that remembrance can take place in different ways with very diverse objects
Museum Judenplatz