In 1938, the Nazis shut down Chajes Jewish high school, making it instead a collecting point for deportation to Auschwitz, part of the grotesque machinery that destroyed Vienna's 200,000 Jews.
This week, the reopened Zwi Perez Chajes high school, the only Jewish high school in German-speaking lands, graduated its first class of 12.For Sonia Feiger, one of a handful of optimists who worked to open the school in 1984, it was "a moment somewhere between dream and reality."
For some 60 surviving pupils of the old Chajes school, invited from around the world, it was a chance to think anew about a city that nurtured the world's third-largest Jewish community, then systematically killed it.
"I would never come to Vienna, I had made up my mind," said Bertha Chayes, 75, of New York City, on her first visit in 54 years. "But after this, I see the relations slowly - I hope surely - on the mend."
The ceremonies, complete with graduation ball in the ornate 19th century city hall, capped determined efforts by Jews born after World War II and some Austrian politicians to rekindle Jewish life in Vienna.
In a city that infamously made its Jews clean pavements with toothbrushes after Hitler's troops occupied Austria in 1938, there are now flourishing Jewish nursery and primary schools, choirs and a small museum.
Austria houses two other Jewish museums, and plans are advanced for a much larger one in Vienna.
Some 6,000 Jews form Vienna's officially recognized Jewish community, which receives about $1 million annually from the state. At least 10,000 more Jews have arrived recently from eastern Europe, Russia and even distant Iran.
Last year, for the first time in decades, the community registered more births and arrivals than deaths and departures.
In another first this year, Jewish culture was part of the city's showcase arts festival.
It was a faint echo of the glory of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Jews like Gustav Mahler or Sigmund Freud built Vienna's cultural fame, and Jews loyal to the Habsburg monarchs dominated many professions.
Last July, Chancellor Franz Vranitzky delivered the first official apology for Austrians' role in the Holocaust.