Police officers walk along the Shoah Wall of Names Memorial bearing the names of 64,000 Austrian Jews who were killed in the Holocaust ahead of its opening in Vienna, Austria November 9, 2021. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

An Israeli online genealogy platform has partnered with the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) in Jerusalem to publish for the first time online a collection of emigration applications from Jews in Vienna, Austria, seeking to flee Nazi persecution before World War II.

The MyHeritage collection, which is searchable for free, contains 228,250 digitalized records filed by Vienna Jews from 1938 to 1939, immediately leading up to the war, as well as scanned images of the original documents.

Vienna at the time was home to approximately 200,000 Jews. Following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938, Jews living in Austria were forced to register with the emigration department of the Vienna Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, the city’s Jewish communal organization in Vienna, to leave the country.

Each head of household had to fill out a detailed questionnaire that contained personal information such as the name of the applicant, address, date of birth, place of birth, marital status, nationality, residency status in Vienna, and information about dependents and parents. The questionnaire also asked about the applicant’s profession, language skills, economic situation, and monthly income. The forms were often filed with additional documents, including letters, affidavits, official papers, correspondence and hand-written notes.

The detailed records make up one of the most revealing collections in existence on Austrian Jewish life from the years 1938–39, according to MyHeritage. The information in the documents was later used by the Nazis to help them expel Jews from Austria.

The emigration papers are currently stored in the Viennese Jewish community’s archives, where the CAHJP maintains some holdings.