Statecraft with Avi Jorisch

Martin Engelberg: Former Jewish Member of Austria's Parliament. Can Jews Still Call Europe Home?

Oct 20

Martin Engelberg is a psychoanalyst and leadership coach and a former member of Austria's Parliament.

The son of Holocaust survivors, Martin Engelberg has built a deeply Jewish life in Vienna while France has become the battleground for Europe's Jews. He believes staying and being ready to leave belong to the same commitment.

He grew up in a city that would not speak about its past. Decades later he entered parliament to help shape the country his parents had chosen as their home.

That choice put him at odds with parts of his own community, when he defended a governing coalition with the Freedom Party, a party whose roots lie among former Nazis.

Then Avi Jorisch hands him a Jewish community's budget. Martin would put the money into education and the next generation, and leave the fight against antisemitism to the state. Avi follows with a more personal question: what is his own plan B?

This is not a conversation about whether Europe is safe for Jews. It is about what a family owes its children when the answer keeps changing.

And it ends on the choice his father faced after the war, and what Martin hopes his own children will say about his.

Statecraft with Avi Jorisch is a production of IEF. Conversations with the people shaping the destiny of Israel and the Jewish people.