Are Jewish communities making a comeback in central and Eastern Europe?

More than 100 Orthodox rabbis gathered in Vienna this week to find ways to revive Jewish life in eastern and central European communities. Many communities are still recovering from the devastation of World War II and the repression during four decades of communism. European Commission President Romano Prodi also attended the conference, which has been dealing with education and support for Jewish communities - mainly in the former communist countries. Eduard Serotta is a filmmaker and photographer who's Vienna based Centropa organisation researches the history of Jewish life in Central Europe.

"Jewish life has indeed come back. The number of Jews in these communities is very small, in most cases. In Hungary however there's over a hundred thousand Jews in Budapest alone, but these communities are working towards revitalising themselves and these Rabbis are interested in being part of that process."

If I was to quote Rabbi Bidermann of Vienna, he said they need Rabbis. Granted, but they must need many more things as well?

"One of the main things they need is social welfare. What you have is a huge percentage of the Jewish population in this part of the world is a, elderly and b, impoverished and c, what makes them different from their non-Jewish neighbours is they don't have any living relatives because they would have been the only members from their families to have survived the holocaust. So yes the first line of helping these communities is social welfare for those holocaust survivors still living."

Many are leaving though. Many left Russia and surely the other countries of Central Europe have seen an out migration as well. Can that be stopped?

"Jews are like everybody else in the world - homo economicus - they go where their chances are better. Budapest, Prague, Warsaw - here you have cities with real economy, with real life chances for everyone, so therefore people are generally staying. If you look at Ukraine, and you look at Romania then you generally find that everybody wants to get out if they can. Of course many have relatives living in Israel and so many of the Jews living in the former Soviet Union have emigrated to Israel but at the same time one of the great ironies of our day is that right now more Jews from the former Soviet Union are choosing to move to Germany, where they are welcomed and where they have what's called contingent refugee status. And they're choosing to live there because of better life chances."

Many statements from the head of the Jewish community here indicate that the community in Austria is not growing, certainly not at the rate one would expect. Have you any thoughts on why Austria is not a good example of a thriving Jewish community?

"The enormous question facing Austria, Germany and all countries in the European Union is how to create an intelligent immigration policy, and an integration policy that will work hand in glove with it. Being an American I have a sort of default chip in my head that makes me think that multi ethnic societies aren't a bad thing."

Yet it's not something that you find often praised by politicians in Austria?

"There's no question that Austria and Germany have not yet made the leap to opening themselves up to others who haven't already lived here for a long time. They're making progress - they're just not doing it fast enough. The infrastructure is here, all they need now is, so to speak, the customers."