Headstones of hundreds of Jewish graves, which were buried to hide them from the Nazis, have been unearthed in Vienna, a discovery of “high historical value,” according to one local Jewish official.

Senior Jewish community official Raimund Fastenbauer told Fox News Wednesday that the significance of the discovery is on scale with that of the ancient Jewish cemetery in Prague, the oldest known graveyard of its kind and one city’s most visited tourist sites.

Some of the graves date back to the 16th century, and after the excavations, up to 800 stones are expected to be found.

Fastenbauer said the few Jews who still were in Vienna in 1943 hid the gravestones from the Nazis but were recently found during renovation of their original small cemetery.

Officials from the Jewish Museum of Vienna said that hundreds of objects in the museum’s possession were looted from Jewish families during the Holocaust.

A review of the artifacts found 490 objects and more than 980 books that may have been stolen from Jewish owners, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

“For historic reasons, people did not see themselves responsible for investigating the collection referring to provenance,” Christian Kircher, a member of the museum’s board, told the newspaper. “This attitude changed completely during the last few years.”

Museum officials said that researching the origin of Judaica can be quite difficult, given the few identifying markers and the fact that most Jewish institutions that existed before the Holocaust were destroyed. They also cited the lack of funds for such research.

“Our situation is not comparable to any other museum in Austria,” said Danielle Spera, who became the museum director in 2010.

“Anything that was acquired illegally ought to be returned,” she told the Austrian Der Standard daily last month. “There will not be a hint of hesitation.”

The AP has reported that the City of Vienna will rename a section of the fashionable Ring Avenue named after Dr. Karl Lueger, Vienna’s mayor from 1897 to 1910. Lueger was a renowned anti-Semite. One resident of Vienna, a failed postcard artist named Adolf Hitler, said he was inspired by Lueger’s public Jew hatred.

Dr. Karl-Lueger-Ring Avenue will be renamed Universiaetsring, after the city’s university which stretches along that section. This despite the fact that Vienna’s schools of higher education could easily match the old mayor’s zeal for ant-Semitism.

Mayor Lueger could qualify among those anti-Semites who say, “Some of my best friends are Jews.” He did, in fact, had Jewish friends, and joked that he didn’t consider them to be Jewish. He once declared, “I decide who is a Jew.”

Vienna counselor for culture Andreas Mailath-Pokorny said Vienna “should not act as if there were no dark spots” in its history.

For that they would have to rename every street and alley in tow, plus much of the countryside…

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced on Wednesday that it plans to send another inspection team to Iran “in the very near future,” and indicated that progress has been made on obtaining greater transparency from Iran on its nuclear program.