Austria's biggest Jewish sports club, Hakoah, 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, on 12 March 1938. The 'Karl Haber Sport and Leisure Center' is a multi-purpose hall with its own running track, tennis courts, swimming pool, solarium, fitness room, café/restaurant and nursery. It was officially inaugurated next to the Ernst Happel Stadium on land which was given back to Vienna’s Jewish community in 2002 under the so-called Washington Agreements covering the restitution of Jewish property stolen by the Nazis.
The sports center, designed by Austrian architect Thomas Feiger, has been named after Karl Haber, a 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. Alongside the sports grounds are a retirement home and a Jewish school.
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 Park. The club was set up in 1909 after Vienna's sports clubs banned Jews. It grew into the country's biggest athletic club, with about 5,000 members. Its soccer team was Austria's national champion in 1925. Hakoah's grounds were confiscated by the Nazis in 1938 and its name was officially erased from Vienna's books in 1941. Immediately after the war, the club was re-established, although 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.
