The Jewish Community of Vienna (IKG) Collection is not a classic museum collection. Rather, these are objects that became silent witnesses to the destruction of the illustrious and rich Jewish history in Vienna and Austria: ceremonial objects from synagogues, objects from organizations of the Jewish communities and from private households, as well as from the
holdings of the old Jewish Museum, which was closed by the Gestapo in 1938. Between 1938 and 1945, this collection of objects was inventoried in the Ethnographic Museum (“Völkerkundemuseum”)—at that time part of the Natural History Museum—and stored in boxes unprocessed and unattended. Objects confiscated by the National Socialists were returned to the Jewish Community of Vienna after 1945. In 1992, the IKG gave its collection to the Jewish Museum Vienna on permanent loan. Most of the objects first became museum objects through this step.
