In addition to the small Schul, accessed through a side door, it contained a number of apartments. Within this humble structure, torn down after the Second World War, the Jews of Kittsee lived, worked and worshiped as an autonomous, interdependent orthodox community (Kehilla).
The Kittsee Kehilla was one of the culturally prominent Sheva Kehillot, the "Seven Communities" of Deutschkreutz, Eisenstadt, Frauenkirchen, Kittsee, Kobersdorf, Lackenbach and Mattersburg,  that arose in the late 17th century, and stood under the protectorate of the powerful Esterházy family. The Esterházy dynasty's rise under Count Nikolaus [Miklós] (1583-1645) and his son, Prince Paul [Pál] (1635-1713) was marked by the acquisition of vast tracts of land in Hungary, and cemented by a steadfast loyalty to the Habsburg Emperor. Though small Jewish communities existed in Burgenland since early times,  the modern inhabitants of the Sheva Kehillot were refugees, driven out of Vienna by Emperor Leopold I in the early 1670s. [iii] Prince Paul accepted the outcasts into his lands and granted them his protection.  Though he undoubtedly did so for economic reasons, or perhaps to curry favor with the Emperor, the Prince was nevertheless known for his exceptionally indulgent treatment of the Jews in his lands, many of whom accepted his protection in hopes of eventual repatriation to Vienna.
Despite such restrictions, the members of the Kehilla were granted an exceptional degree of religious and civil autonomy in exchange for upholding the terms of their contract with the sovereign. As a community of faith, the Kehilla had control over religious observance and education. As a civil authority, it was responsible for the collection of taxes and protection fees as well as the maintenance of law and order. Many functions of the Kehilla, such as care for the sick, relief of the poor, and burial of the dead were both religious and civil in nature. In the Sheva Kehillot, community members were subject to the judgments of their own rabbinical courts, which settled cases according to halakah, the traditional Jewish law. If a Jew were to sue a Christian, however, he would be required to enter his complaint in a Christian court. Two-thirds of levied fines would revert to the Prince.
In an era marked by religious reform and the awakening of political emancipation, most Hungarian Jews espoused a conservative faith, largely resistant to the doctrinal innovations and social aspirations of the predominantly northern-German Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah). [iv] In Pressburg, a stone's throw from Kittsee, Rabbi Moshe ben Samuel Schreiber, known as the Chatam Sofer (1762-1839), fought vigorously against Enlightenment rationalism, assimilation, and religious reform. The leading halachic authority of his time, Rabbi Sofer is remembered today as one of the founders of Haredi Judaism, the most theologically conservative form of Orthodox Judaism . The maxim for which he is best known, Hadash assur min ha-Torah (חדש אסור מן התורה), was a mishnaic text that he construed to mean: "innovation is forbidden by the Torah." His general attitude toward reform and emancipation seems well encapsulated in Hans Tietze's phrase: "Emancipating the Jews while sacrificing that which is Jewish — suicide out of fear of death." [v] As Rabbi of Pressburg and founder of the large and active Pressburg Yeshiva (Talmudic seminary), Sofer exercised authority over the entire region, including many of the Sheva Kehillot, which persisted as strongly traditional communities until their dissolution in 1938.
Across the river from Kittsee, the Pressburg ghetto was still locked at night. [viii] Nevertheless, Ellenberger claims that Burgenland's Jews, who enjoyed generally good relations with the Christian population, "did not have the feeling of belonging to a persecuted minority." [ix] Many, like Joachim and the psychologist Alfred Adler (whose father was born in Kittsee in 1835), eventually converted to Protestantism. Ellenberger observes: "Men of that background could keep their religion […], but when they lost their faith, the Jewish tradition no longer held any meaning for them. Not being sentimentally attached, they could easily shift to Protestantism or Catholicism without having the feeling of betraying their ancestors or being disloyal to their fellow Jews." [x] This was not quite the case with Joachim, however. Like so many assimilated Jews in the nineteenth-century, his relationship to his Jewish heritage remained complex and ambivalent. Despite his mid-life conversion to Lutheranism, Joachim retained a life-long identification with what he called his "Stammesgenossen," ("those who shared his lineage"), and he informed his parents of his conversion with a distinctly guilty conscience — and only after they had already read of it in the newspapers.
 Hungarian: Német-Keresztur, Kismarton, Boldogasszony, Köpcsény, Kábold, Lakompak and Nagy Marton, respectively. Before 1924, Mattersburg was called Mattersdorf. Principal among these closely cooperating communities was Eisenstadt (Kismarton).
 A contemporary account claims that Kittsee was "where one finds the richest Jews together with a few wholesalers." [Johann v. Csaplovics (ed.), Topographisch-statistisches Archiv des Königreichs Ungern, Vol. 2, Vienna: Anton Doll, 1821, p. 201.] The Hungarian Jewish Lexicon (1929) describes the Kittsee Kehilla as "prestigious" (tekintélyes).
 In a typical Schutzbrief of 1800, the Hochfürstlich Esterházy Schutzjuden of the affiliate Mattersdorf Kehilla were allowed all manner of commerce within the Esterházy domain, as well as the practice of medicine, and trades such as cobbler, tailor, furrier, goldsmith and barber—the numbers of each being strictly limited. Their activities were regulated in detail. Jews could make brandy and exact duties and tolls. They were not, however, allowed to operate taverns. The Jewish butcher was not permitted to slaughter cows for Christians, but was allowed to slaughter smaller livestock for both Christians and Jews. Jews had to obtain the Prince's permission to marry. Marriage taxes were pro-rated according to ability to pay (in 1800 it cost a "rich" Jew 10 Reichsthaler, a "middle" Jew 5 and a "poor" Jew 3).
 Undertakers. The Kabbronim say last prayers and see to the washing, clothing and burying of the dead.
 An essentially untranslatable phrase: "wie tief senkten sie sich in das der Musik entgegenblühende Kinderherz!
 All but Hauser eventually studied under Joseph Böhm in Vienna.
 The revolutionary year 1848 brought an end to Schutzjudenschaft in the Sheva Kehillot, and led to a time of near-full civil rights for Jews. Political and social freedom, as well as economic opportunity, hastened the dissolution of the Kittsee community and its way of life as its members sought opportunity in nearby cities. At the time of Joachim's birth, the Kittsee Kehilla was already seeing the onset of a long decline in numbers, from 789 in 1821 to 625 in 1842, to around 100 at the turn of the 20th century. In 1934 there were 62 Jews left in Kittsee. On April 15, 1938 the community ceased to exist. Elderly residents of Kittsee recount with horror the night the Jewish population of the region was rounded up and locked in a cellar. From there, they were deported in the middle of the night to Audorf on the Danube, where they were put on a rat-infested barge without sanitary facilities. The barge was towed to Hungary, where it was anchored. Seventy people spent the entire summer on the barge before obtaining permission to disembark and emigrate. None of Kittsee's Jews ever returned.
[iv] Shoshana Duizend-Jensen, Jüdische Gemeinden, Vereine, Stiftungen und Fonds: "Arisierung" und Restitution, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2004, p. 162.
[vi] David Philipson, The Reform Movement in Judaism, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907, p. 380.
[vii] Kompert/GHETTO, pp. 263-264 [Author's translation.] Apocryphal or not, a similar story is told about the death of the famously triskaidekaphobic Arnold Schoenberg, who died on Friday the 13th, 1951.
My mother was born in KItsee and I just returned from a trip to explore our family roots. Her father was Jacob Schapiro, a Cantor and Shochet who assisted the Rabbi of Kitsee. They lived in the Shul, – my grandparents and their four childeren. Their family was among the Jews who were evicted from Kitsee and spent months on a barge in the Danube before being transferred to a detention camp in Hungary. Luckily, my grandfather had a sister, Pearl who worked tirelessly to get them papers and bring them to America. My Uncle Joe, who was the oldest of the four children, did return to Kitsee in the 1970's. Since then, My Uncle Asher has also visited there and some cousins as well as myself. We are in touch with Irmgard Jurkovivh who is a wealth of knowledge about the Jews in Kitsee.