A survey carried out in 1997 revealed that Austria had one of the highest levels of racism in the European Union. The Austrian Freedom Party continued to register electoral successes and its leader, Jörg Haider, declared his intention to run for chancellor in 1999. Only a few violent anti-Semitic incidents were registered. However, it seems that not all anti-Semitic incidents are reported to the authorities or by the press. Many racist and anti-Semitic publications continued to appear regularly. An article in the new weekly Zur Zeit revived an old anti-Semitic blood libel.

JEWISH COMMUNITY

EXTREMIST MOVEMENTS AND HATE GROUPS

Extreme Right-Wing Political Parties
Since becoming party chairman in 1986, Jörg Haider has turned the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Austrian Freedom Party -- FPÖ) into the most powerful and successful extreme right-wing party in Western Europe. With 40 deputies in the Austrian parliament and 6 in the European Parliament, the FPÖ continues to register electoral successes. At the end of January 1998, for example, it emerged as the sole winner of the elections in Graz, capturing 16 seats on the district council of Austria's second largest town.

Today, the FPÖ, whose leader is considered by 40 percent of the population to be a neo-fascist and who, according to a decision of Austria's High Court, may be called "the political foster father and ideologist of extreme right-wing terror," represents one-third of the Austrian population. Declaring as his goal in 1999 the chancellery and the establishment of what he calls the Third Republic, Haider introduced several fundamental changes into the FPÖ political program during the party's convention in Linz, on October 30. When, for electoral purposes, he proposed a policy of rapprochement with the church as well as abrogation of pro-German nationalist policies, he was sharply criticized by opponents within the party. The publication of Haider's book, Befreite Zukunft, jenseits von links und rechts (Liberated Future beyond Left and Right) must also be seen as part of his effort to gain national as well as international respectability. Another example of these endeavors is his employment of a token Jew, the controversial Jewish writer Peter Sichrovsky, who organizes Haider's public relations in the US, and represents the FPÖ in the European Parliament.

In an attempt to portray himself as the defender of those concerned about the impact of the euro (the European currency (on the employment situation and on purchasing power, Haider initiated a petition, between November 24 and December 1, demanding that a referendum be held on the introduction of the euro into Austria. This was in spite of the fact that the government had rejected the idea of holding a referendum, because it had already decided that Austria would become one of the pioneers and supporters of the euro. According to Haider, Austria should consider exchanging the schilling for the euro only after the planned EU currency proved to be stable, as Austria has a strong currency to defend. Only 254,077 people signed the petition, 4.4 percent of those entitled to vote in Austria.

Although Haider tried to mask the links of some party members with neo-Nazi activists, he was not able to prevent them from becoming public knowledge. For example, it was disclosed in early 1997 that FPÖ member Rene Schimanek, brother of the imprisoned neo-Nazi activist Jorg Schimanek, was deeply involved in the paramilitary neo-Nazi organization Kameradschaft Langenlois, founded in 1986 by his brother.

Extra-parliamentary Right-Wing Groups
Thousands of skinheads and militant neo-Nazis are active in groups and organizations that are considered dangerous to democracy in Austria (see ASW 1996/7). The banned Volkstreue Ausserparlamentarische Opposition (Ethnically Loyal Extra-parliamentary Opposition -- VAPO), the umbrella organization for many such groups, is still active underground, although its leaders are imprisoned.

Neo-Nazi support groups, such as Nationalfreiheitliche Gefangenenhilfe (National Freedom Aid for Prisoners) and Forum für ein humanes und demokratisches Strafrecht und zur Erhaltung der Menschenrechte (Forum for a Human and Democratic Penal Code and for the Defense of Human Rights -- FSM) continued their advisory work for Holocaust deniers and provided a cadre for neo-Nazi activities.

Several Austrian student organizations harbor racist and anti-Semitic sentiments. The Österreichischer Kameradschaftsbund (Austrian Comrades League) and Österreichischer Turnerbund (Austrian Gymnastics Association -- ÖTB) are the largest extreme right student associations. Anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial propaganda can often be found in Der Kamerad (The Comrade), published by the Austrian Comrades League, as well as in Bundesturnzeitung, of the Austrian Gymnastics Association. It should be noted that these organizations maintain links with like-minded groups in Germany. The Viennese radical right-wing student fraternity Olympia, for example, took over the presidency of the 20,000-member umbrella organization Deutsche Burschenschaft (German Student Fraternity -- DB), in 1997.

ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIVITIES

Violence, Vandalism, Threats and Insults
As in previous years only a few violent incidents were reported to the authorities or by the press, and only a few events become public. Nevertheless, three Jewish cemetery desecrations were recorded in 1997: in Klagenfurth, St. Ruprecht, in March; in Matersburg, in April; and the small Jewish cemetery in Gmunden, in July. In addition, two bomb threats were received in October by Jewish institutions in Vienna. The anti-Semitic experience of a group of Italian Jews visiting Austria in August aroused public opinion. The tourists left their hotel and the country after the innkeeper shouted anti-Semitic insults and physically assaulted two of them.

Propaganda and Holocaust Denial
Racist and anti-Semitic publications such as AFP-Information, Albus (of the NSDAP section of Austria), Braunauer Ausblick, Der Volkstreue and Halt, continue to be distributed in Austria. The Deutsch-Österreichisches Institut für Zeitgeschichte (German-Austrian Institute for Contemporary History -- DÖIZ), headed by Walter Ochensberger, and the publishing house Volkssturm, owned by the Viennese FPÖ representative Helmut Kowarik, are the main distributors of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic works in Austria today.

October 1997 marked the first appearance of the weekly Zur Zeit, of former FPÖ ideologue Andreas Mölzer. On December 5, a furor arose after it published an article by Prof. Robert Prantner reviving a ritual murder charge, and, indirectly, Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus. Prantner, a lecturer at the Heiligenkreuz Theological Academy, invoked the two main motifs of Christian anti-Semitism, ritual murder and deicide. The murder charge in question is connected to the Anderl von Rinn cult, which has been maintained in Austria since the 17th century when Jews were accused of the ritual murder of an Austrian boy, Anderl from Rinn. Although the pilgrimage to Anderl's birthplace was officially banned in 1985, and both the bishop of Innsbruck, Rein Stecher, and the Vatican issued a decree declaring that there had never been a ritual murder, the tradition has continued.

An anti-Semitic article, published in July 1997 in the monthly Wiener, by Thomas Köpf and editor Wolfgang Höllriegl, was directed against the Jewish community. As a result, Wiener was condemned by the Presserat (press association).

A book by Thomas Brezina, author of children's fiction, aroused protests because of its Stürmer-like illustrations by Robert Rottensteiner. The illustrations were eventually replaced.

During the month of November 1997, various pamphlets, such as "Huttenbriefe," as well as books with anti-Semitic and anti-democratic content, were distributed in Graz schools by sham organizations such as the Institut für Geisteswissenaschaftliche Didaktik or Steirische Kulturinitiative. The Presseclub Concordia, the union of Austrian journalists, announced in its newsletter the release of Ernst Bauer's book, Das Waldheim Komplott. Eine politische Sittengeschichte, which depicts the Waldheim affair (see previous reports) as a conspiracy of the World Jewish Congress. The book is published by the Ibera Verlag in Vienna.

As in previous years, anti-Semitic propaganda in 1997 was mainly disseminated by the extreme right-wing media and through the Internet. Frank Swoboda and Peter Kurt Weiss continued to be the main operators in this field. The Ministry of Justice has been conducting investigations to decide whether the distribution of anti-Semitic materials through the Internet constituted an infringement of the criminal code. The most virulently anti-Semitic homepage of Austrian neo-Nazis is called Bürgerschutz (Citizens' Defense), operated by Weiss and Swoboda.

ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA

As in Germany, the choice of site for erecting a Holocaust memorial to the 65,000 Austrian Jews murdered by the Nazis continued to be the subject of a public debate. This followed the discovery of remnants of the medieval Jewish community at the Judenplatz in Vienna, originally selected as the site.

RESPONSES TO EXTREMISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM

Court Cases and Legal Proceedings
The suspected perpetrator of a series of bomb attacks that caused much harm in Austria from 1993 was arrested by chance in October 1997 (see previous reports).

During 1997 several activists of the militant neo-Nazi VAPO were found guilty of plotting to abolish the democratic system and replace it with a Nazi dictatorship, with Austria annexed to a Greater German Reich. They were given suspended sentences ranging from four to eight months. In addition, Herbert Schweiger, former Waffen SS member and publisher of the book Evolution und Wissen. Neuordnung der Politik. (Evolution and Knowledge. The New Political Order) was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for neo-Nazi activities and publications.

A court case that aroused much interest in Austria was the suit filed by the film maker Andreas Gruber, against Helmuth Jossek, an FPÖ district councilor in Wels. Jossek called Gruber a Volksschädling (people pest) and Stadtschädling (town pest) after the latter described in his film Hasenjagd the escape of Soviet war prisoners from the Mauthausen concentration camp in early 1945. Gruber instituted proceedings against Jossek on the grounds that these expressions were part of the terminology of the Nazi regime.

Official and Public Action
Since October 1997 the Interior Ministry has been operating a site on its official Internet home page, where the public can report incidents of NS-Wiederbetätigung (revival of Nazism), meaning right-wing extremism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. This may prove to be an important means to monitor and control hate crimes in Austria.

The Stiftung Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, which monitors racist, extreme right and neo-Nazi propaganda on the Internet published in 1997 the book Das Netz Des Hasses (The Hate Net).

In summer 1997, the Anti-Defamation League opened a regional office for Middle and Eastern Europe in Vienna.