Vienna’s Jewish Restaurant Owner: ‘If I’d Been There, It Could Have Ended Very Differently’

VIENNA (VINnews) — Rabbi Shalom Bernholtz, the owner of a restaurant near the synagogue attacked Monday in Vienna, told the Kikar Hashabat site that miraculously, he was not at his restaurant Monday night.

Bernholtz said that his restaurant had been closed because the Austrian government had announced a month-long closure on Monday. On Sunday there was a Sheva Brochos celebration for a Chareidi businessman from Jerusalem and the same kind of celebration could have occurred on Monday.

Bernholtz said that the attack took place on the Stadt Tempel which is the center of the Jewish community and is guarded throughout the year by police and security guards. He added that “we are constantly having events here but the security is very heavy. I think that the Muslims decided to run wild because of what is happening in France. Two days ago they entered a church and began wrecking everything and yesterday too they entered the largest church there and today they started with the Jews.”

Bernholtz says that he decided to close the restaurant but “if I had been there, everything could have ended differently. At present as far as we know there are no Jewish casualties.”