Islamische Gemeinde zu Wien (est. 1942)

Muslims in Vienna between Collaboration and Protection of Jews during the Second World War

Abstract

The paper addresses the forgotten history of the Islamische Gemeinde zu Wien (registered name: Islamische Gemeinschaft zu Wien) the Muslim organisation in Vienna during the Second World War. It begins by reviewing the scant information in the literature, which places the organisation exclusively in a context of collaboration. Based on statements from a contemporary witness and obscure Croatian secret police sources, it then draws a complex picture of a small community of mainly Bosnian Muslim students, caught between Nazi recruitment for the nascent 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS “Handschar”, Bosniak autonomist aspirations, and the personal desire to avoid military service, and includes its efforts to protect Jews. Through this, the paper illuminates the early history of a group whose core members played a central role in Islamic community institutionalisation in post-war Austria, and culminated in the organisation’s official reapproval in 1979.