austria 2006

 

As in previous years, antisemitism in Austria in 2006 was expressed mainly in propaganda, though one violent incident was recorded. Despite its increasingly extremist right-wing position and links to neo-Nazi groups, the Austrian Freedom Party won 11 percent of the vote in the October general election, slightly more than in 2002.

 

the jewish community

Austria has a Jewish population of 10,000 out of a total population of 8 million. Most registered members of the community are affiliated to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (IKG − Jewish Community Vienna). The present community, mostly located in Vienna, is made up of several groups, the most numerous being returnee Austrians and their families, as well as former refugees from Eastern Europe. A Jewish primary school and high school, as well as several Jewish publications, such as the monthly Die Gemeinde and Aufbau and the quarterly David, serve the needs of the community.

In January 2006, an Austrian court ruled in favor for the restitution of five Gustav Klimt paintings stolen by the Nazi regime, with an estimated value of some US $150 million. Austria’s arbitration court issued a decision compelling the Austrian government to return the paintings to Maria Altmann, the heir of a Jewish family forced to quit Austria after the Nazi Anschluss in 1938. Altmann had sued Austria in 1999 to get back the works. The decision followed a ruling in December 2005 by the Austrian parliament authorizing payment from a fund created in 2001 to provide compensation for Austrian Holocaust survivors and their heirs. Austrian Holocaust survivors could only benefit from this fund after a US federal judge dismissed an art claims case brought by Austrian Jewish Holocaust survivors, Whiteman vs. Austria, following the IKG’s withdrawal of 770 applications. The Austrian government had been seeking the dismissal of all US court claims against Austria and Austrian companies for Holocaust-era damage before releasing compensation funds from the General Settlement Fund of $210 million. Some 19,300 survivors have applied for payments from the fund.

Following his participation in the Tehran Holocaust denial conference in December, self-declared chief rabbi of the Ultra-Orthodox Jews Moishe Friedman was expelled from the Jewish community.

 

extremist organizations and groups

The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) received 11 percent of the vote in the October 2006 general election, compared to 10 percent in 2002. Animosity between the FPÖ (21 seats) and Jörg Haider’s Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ − 7 seats), which split from the FPÖ in April 2005, prevented the latter from forming a coalition with the former ruling Austrian People’s Party ÖVP (66 seats). At the opening of Parliament, all 21 FPÖ representatives wore a blue cornflower in their buttonholes. Between 1933 and 1938 blue cornflowers served as a symbol identifying the illegal NSDAP in Austria. Nevertheless, politicians of the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ – 68 seats), which formed a coalition government with the ÖVP, have begun to trivialize the increasingly extremist right-wing position of the FPÖ. For example, they portray FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache as trying to distance himself from neo-Nazism (see below).

As a result of FPÖ’s further shift to the right, beginning in 2002 and intensifying in 2005, the line between (legal) right-wing extremism and (illegal) neo-Nazism became even more blurred. The Ring Freiheitlicher Jugend (RFJ, the FPÖ’s youth wing) in particular, showed signs in 2006 of a convergence with Nazi discourse and activists. Neo-Nazis, for their part, have begun viewing the FPÖ, under the leadership of Heinz-Christian Strache, as “their” party. This trend was reinforced by Austrian neo-Nazi Gerd Honsik who appealed for the first time to vote for the FPÖ. Honsik, who avoided serving an 18 month prison sentence in 1992 for violation of the Nazi prohibition law by fleeing to Spain, called the FPÖ “the only party in which the leading figures still profess to and stand up for the German people.”

Following Honsik’s appeal, Ariel Muzicant, president of the IKG, openly criticized the FPÖ in the media for its neo-Nazi connections. As a result, he was subjected to antisemitic attacks; in early September, the German neo-Nazi website stoertebeker wrote, for example: “Killer arguments from the mouth of a half-Asian, who is known (despite his laundry detergent name) for not having a completely clean record, were not defamatory but rather complimentary, in that the maligned politics are at least heading in the right direction.” Further, it said, on the day of the “expected national uprising,” Muzicant would do well “if he and his kind find themselves on the next plane to Tel Aviv.” Jews have “not yet grasped their last lesson” (referring to the Shoah).

Following the conviction of John Gudenus, former FPÖ member of the Bundesrat (Upper House) and Nationalrat (National Assembly), and until summer 2006 co-editor of the FPÖ affiliated weekly Zur Zeit (see below), the paper took up his cause in June, arguing that Gudenus had only exercised his right of freedom of speech in questioning the existence of gas chambers in the Third Reich. This position apparently reflects the FPÖ party line, evidenced by then high-ranking FPÖ official Ewald Stadler (who has since left the party), who not only ceremoniously greeted Gudenus at a party event in Vienna on 8 May, but also won enthusiastic applause when he spoke out against the “political sentence” passed on him.

In July it became public that Styrian FPÖ regional spokesperson Gerhard Kurzmann was a member of the extreme right Kameradschaft IV (K IV), an association traditionally linked to the Waffen SS. When speaking on Austrian radio, Kurzmann rebutted the DÖW’s characterization of the K IV − as an organization located somewhere between right-wing extremism and neo-Nazism − as a “sweeping assumption.”

Following the death of an Austrian UN soldier in Lebanon in July, Dietmar Gerhartl, a FPÖ district councilor in Neunkirchen, Lower Austria, wrote on the website of the Palästinensischen Gemeinde in Österreich (Palestinian Community in Austria) that he had long since grown tired “of having to watch the injustice in Palestine without being able to say or do anything about it.” As a Freiheitlicher (FPÖ member) “one is a victim of the Nazi bludgeon (and so with every criticism of Israel one is labeled a Nazi).” However, as the “terrorist state of Israel has now killed an Austrian too in cowardly fashion” and the “mass murderers with the Star of David… continue to go unpunished,” he no longer feared the “Nazi bludgeon” as the real Nazis were those in Israel.” Styrian FPÖ chairman Kurzmann said that “the Jewish state must finally recognize that the community of civilized states would no longer allow state terrorists to lead them a merry dance.” At the end of July the FPÖ demanded the suspension of relations with Israel. Condemning “Israel’s aggressive policies which contravene human and international law,” FPÖ member of the European Parliament (MEP) Andreas Mölzer decided to demonstrate solidarity by hoisting a Palestinian flag in front of his house.

            Walter Sucher, member of the far right student league (Burschenschaft) Olympia and chairman of the Ringes volstreuer Verbände (umbrella group of organizations “faithful to the Volk”), warned at the Vienna FPÖ regional party congress in May, against denial of deutsches Volkstum (German “folklore,” with its racist connotation) and appealed for its protection. He concluded his speech with “our traditional, real greeting… a vigorous Heil!” Sucher sees himself and his party as victims of a “witch hunt.” During the congress, FPÖ chairman Strache threatened to don his “battle dress” in light of the “Turkish siege.”

The Alliance of Free Youth (BFJ) (modeled on Hitler Youth), the youth wing of the Team for Democratic Policy (AFP), a right-wing extremist group with neo-Nazi connections named after Dr. Fritz Stüber, a Nazi co-founder of FPÖ, joined with other neo-Nazis (including leading neo-Nazi Gottfried Küssel) in an illegal demonstration on International Human Rights Day, 10 December, in several Upper Austrian cities. A further demonstration in Ried/Innkreis organized by Reinthaler was forbidden by the authorities.

In October AFP’s annual “Political Academy” took place near Vienna. Speeches were made by Reinthaler, Andreas Thierry, Roman Grassl (alias “Volker Dorn”), BFJ leader Stefan Magnet, NPD politician Holger Apfel and others.

 

antisemitic activity

According to official Austrian sources, 204 extreme right criminal (2005: 188), 28 racist (2005: 13) and 8 (2005: 8) antisemitic actions were reported in 2006, mostly propaganda and verbal offenses (threats) and damage to property (graffiti). Legal proceedings were launched in 419 (2005: 406) cases. Twenty-four persons were sentenced under the National Socialist prohibition law.

The Forum against Anti-Semitism registered 214 antisemitic incidents (2005: 143), including one physical assault and three incidents of vandalism.

 

Antisemitic Violence

On the night of 25 November, over 100 windows were broken and the rest rooms damaged in the Lauder Chabad Jewish school in Vienna. The suspect, arrested on the school premises in the early morning of 26 November, gave his name as Adolf Hitler. Jewish community head Ariel Muzicant called the incident the most serious in the last 20 years. A 24-year-old of Croatian origin was sentenced in early 2007 to 15 months imprisonment for vandalism. In court he told journalists that there were too many Jews in Austria. The Jewish community of Austria thought the sentence too light.

 

Propaganda

During a lecture to Catholic fundamentalists in September, FPÖ Member of Parliament Ewald Stadler spoke of the “cross-linking between politics and Freemasonry.” According to the right-wing Catholic antisemitic website kreuz.net, Stadler claimed that the EU was “the most important instrument of Freemason politics” and that the Masons were “busy developing a civil religion with the Holocaust at the center.” The worldwide Freemason conspiracy was behind revolutions and uprisings, he said, and was attempting to bring all states under their control.

Shortly afterwards, during an election appearance in St Pölten, Stadler compared the Fristenlösung (law allowing abortion in the first trimester) to the Shoah: “The number of children murdered since the implementation of the Fristenlösung correlates with certain numbers… that we hear about time and time again in the historical debate.”

            The German neo-Nazi Rigolf Hennig, who began serving a nine-month prison sentence in July, claimed in Aula (Sept.) he could see signs of the end of Israel “as a religious and imperial fixed-point for wandering Jews spread over the world.” Hennig, who was recently released from prison, continued: “The Jews’ entry occurred from the outset by way of deception, through the most brutal violence, expulsions, deprivation of rights and murder.”

Although Zur Zeit (directed by FPÖ-MEP Andreas Mölzer) tries to appear more moderate, antisemitic articles continue to be published. Referring to the Prophet Muhammad cartoon affair, French New Right ideologist Alain de Benoist asks why it took from September 2005 until January 2006 for the collective fury of so many Muslims to break forth. In response, he cites “the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections.” Benoist supposes that by enabling the Hamas’ success, Israel wanted the Islamic world to react strongly “in order to dissuade the EU from continuing financial support for Palestinian autonomy.” The pictures of hate-filled anti-West protests, particularly in Gaza and the West Bank, helped to persuade Europeans that funding to the Palestinians should be cut.

Conservative Catholic writer Friedrich Romig explained that the “real” reason was that the culture department chief of the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, responsible for first publishing the Muhammad cartoons had been posted to Washington in 1996, where he moved in “neo-conservative circles of dedicated Zionists.” Back in Denmark he immediately began “to make the baiting of Islam socially acceptable.” The “struggles over the cartoons became a way of unifying the West over the wars and [enabling the implementation of] repressive measures against… all countries that continued to oppose Zionist world domination.”

At the end of the year Romig (Zur Zeit, nos. 51-52) claimed that it was the “Jewish question” that had determined the course of history over the past two thousand years, in particular, the fight between “good and evil,” Christianity and Judaism.

Gerhard Honsik began to operate his own website from exile in Spain. He praised the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary election at the beginning of February, condemned the publication of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as “an insult to the Islamic world by the world press,” and claimed that the world did not want to know anything about freedom of speech “when someone comes along and asks for evidence about the Holocaust.”

 

Attitudes towards the Holocaust

The June edition of Aula featured an interview with former Nazi officer and leader of the “Arabian Volunteer Band” Franz Wimmer-Lamquet (89) who, in 2006, released his memoirs Balkenkreuz und Halbmond (published by the ultra-right Wolfgang Dvorak-Stocker’s Ares-Verlag). The extent the retired colonel still identifies with Hitler and National Socialism becomes clear at several points: refuting attempts by the “Reds” to portray Hitler as a “lunatic or a savage,” he maintains, that unlike them Hitler was a cultivated man. Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess was a man “who did a lot of good”; while Wimmer-Lamquet has a high estimation of Reinhard Heydrich, the key organizer of the Final Solution. Heydrich had a “clear line” and was “not corrupt.” The DÖW asked the Graz public prosecutor to assess the interview with a view to taking criminal action (perhaps due to violation of the Nazi prohibition law). However, the request was shelved.

An article in the monthly Aula (Jan.), published by the Freiheitlichen Akademikerverbänden (Associations of Freedom Party Graduates), which has close links to the FPÖ, dealt with the persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi regime. Referring to them as “57 000 homosexual delinquents,” the writer, Fred Duswald, explained that homosexuals “had the highest death rate among all groups of prisoners,” because they were the group most at risk, “even in peacetime, because their sexual orientation goes against the divine order of things and their average life expectancy is… only half that of heterosexuals.” In concentration camps they were not all murdered, he claimed; many committed suicide because of their “nature.”

The Holocaust denial conference held in Tehran in December was attended by three Austrian right-wing extremists: Herbert Schaller, Hans Gamlich and Wolfgang Fröhlich. Moishe A. Friedman, an American citizen who lives in Vienna and calls himself a “chief rabbi” was also there. Friedman, who is often invited to Iran and receives assistance from the FPÖ, claimed that “Zionists” stood behind World War II and the Holocaust.

 

responses to racism and antisemism

On 27 April the Austrian parliament marked the 61st anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen concentration camp. The legislators discussed Nazism, violence and racism. Deputy Speaker Thomas Prinzhon said vigilance was needed to fight racism and terrorism.

Senior FPÖ activist John Gudenus (see ASW 2005 and above) was convicted by a jury and given a one year suspended sentence for repeated violations of the Nazi prohibition law. The proceedings related to comments made by Gudenus, who demanded “physical and scientific proof” of the existence of gas chambers in Nazi camps and denied there had been any in the Third Reich. A further issue raised at the trial was Gudenus’ visit to Mauthausen, where he commented on a photograph showing prisoners there that they “actually look quite good.”

On 20 February an Austrian court sentenced British Holocaust denier David Irving to three years imprisonment. Irving was arrested in November 2005 before he could address Viennese students and graduates from the right wing fraternity Olympia, among them many FPÖ politicians. On the advice of his lawyer, he pleaded guilty and said he had made a mistake claiming there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. On 20 December Irving’s appeal was granted and two-thirds of his prison sentence was converted into probation, after he underwent what the judge called an "impeccable conversion.” The judge, Ernst Maurer, is reportedly sympathetic to the FPÖ. (Maurer was chosen to represent the party on the board of governors of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation.) Irving spent 13 months in prison. On 21 December he was deported to the UK where he renewed his racist and antisemitic diatribes in a press conference.

While in prison Irving engaged a new lawyer, Herbert Schaller, who since 1991 has openly denied the gas chambers. As noted, Schaller participated in the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran.