Five gravestones in the historic Jewish cemetery in Hohenems, in Austria’s far-western Voralberg Region, have been vandalized, but it was apparently the work of drunken revelers attending a festival Sunday night held in a tent a few hundred meters away, not an anti-Semitic action.
Police are investigating the incident, but local sources and news media said the vandals apparently moved on to the cemetery and climbed its wall after already causing damage at the Festival tent, including the destruction of several benches. The cemetery is a protected historic monument and forms part of an important complex of Jewish heritage sites in the town, including the former synagogue and the Hohenems Jewish Museum.
A local source in Hohenems told JHE that a Roman Catholic cemetery near Hohenems had been vandalized several weeks ago.
One day before the incident at the Jewish cemetery, a new Muslim cemetery was opened not far from the Jewish cemetery — the third in Austria after those in Vienna and Graz. Voralberg has seen an influx of Muslim immigrants from Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovina and other countries in recent years, and it is estimated that Muslims make up 10 percent of the region’s population. The cemetery design was a collaborative project between the local architect Bernardo Bader and Sarajevo-born artist and architectural historian Azra Aksamija, who teaches architecture at MIT in Boston.