The Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), under Jörg Haider, the most
successful extreme right-wing party in Europe, won the Carinthian
provincial elections in March 1999 with an overwhelming 42 percent of the
vote. Religiously-motivated anti-Semitism is on the rise in Austria. The Ostara
homepage, a conglomeration of sites, is the main promoter of Austrian right-wing
extremism on the Internet. A counter-exhibition to the controversial
Wehrmacht exhibition was opened by a veterans' association in March 1998.

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
Austria has a Jewish population of 10,000 out of a total population of 8
million. Nearly all of the Jews live in Vienna and there are no other Jewish
communities with more than 100 members. Before the Anschluss in 1938
there were over 180,000 Jews in Austria, of whom about 65,000 perished in
the Holocaust. The present community in Austria is made up of several
distinct groups. The most numerous are Austrian expatriates and their
offspring, as well as former refugees from Eastern Europe. A sizable
community of Caucasian and Iranian Jews has been present in Vienna since
the 1970s. The Bundesverband der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinden (Union of
Jewish Communities) is the umbrella organization of Jews in Austria but
there is also a separate Sephardi federation. A Jewish primary school and
gymnasium and several Jewish publications serve the needs of the
community. The ultra-Orthodox operate an independent school system and
other institutions.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS
The FPÖ
The Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party of Austria -- FPÖ),
under the chairmanship of Jörg Haider, has established itself as the most
successful extreme right-wing party in Europe, with 40,000 party members
and the support of more than one-fifth of Austria's electorate. Under Haider,
who took over the leadership in 1986, the party shifted to the extreme right,
a factor which seems to have contributed to its success at the polls. In the
last few years Haider has being attempting to temper the party's image, for
example, omitting the traditional declaration of belonging to the "German
people and the German cultural community" (Deutsche Volksgemeinschaft)
in the new party program (see previous reports), a move which infuriated
the Old Guard. The substitute passage, however, is not a total break with
Pan-Germanism as it includes the phrase, "The great majority of Austrians
belong to the German ethnic group." This re-phrasing is a tactic to avoid
Nazi terminology such as Volksgemeinschaft.
On 7 March 1999 the FPÖ surprised the country by winning the
Carinthian provincial elections, with an overwhelming 42 percent of the
vote. Some 26,000 traditional sympathizers of the Sozialdemokratische Partei
Österreich (Austrian Social Democratic Party -- SPÖ) voted for the first time
for Haider and 8,000 former supporters of the Österreichische Volkspartei
(Austrian People's Party -- ÖVP) defected to his party. In April Haider was
elected governor of Carinthia where, in 1991, he had been forced to resign
from a previous term for praising the employment policies of Adolf Hitler.
In May 1998 the party leadership suffered a setback when FPÖ member
of parliament Peter Rosenstingl absconded to Brazil. As the FPÖ Lower
Austrian élite were also involved in dubious financial transactions, many
leading functionaries had to resign or were expelled. The new chairman of
the FPÖ in Lower Austria is Hans-Jörg Schimanek and the regional FPÖ
secretary is Barbara Rosenkranz. Both have family ties to neo-Nazis. Barbara
Rosenkranz's husband, Horst Jakob Rosenkranz, a former activist of the
right-wing extremist Nationaldemokratische Partei (National Democratic
Party -- NDP), banned in 1988, is the current chairman of the extreme right-wing
Partei Kritische Demokraten (Critical Democrats Party) and editor of
the ultra-right-wing magazine Fakten. In 1990 Rosenkranz stood for election
to the Vienna City Council together with the neo-Nazis Gerd Honsik and
Franz Radl, Jr., on an anti-foreigner ticket. Their Liste Nein zur Ausländer-flut
(No to Foreigner Flood List) was declared to be a neo-Nazi group by the
Constitutional Court and banned from participation in the election.
Schimanek's son Hans-Jörg, Jr., was sentenced to eight years imprisonment
in 1995 for military and neo-fascist activities. In addition to supporting his
son's actions, Schimanek attacked the NS-Verbotsgesetz (law banning neo-Nazi
and neo-fascist activities and Holocaust denial), calling it "anti-human
rights," in a letter to the popular daily paper Kronen-Zeitung. The Verbotsge-setz,
he continued, was "dictated to us by the Allies in 1945" and "in 1992
motivated ... a 'reform' influenced by Messrs. Wiesenthal and Neugebauer
[Wolfgang Neugebauer, the scientific director of Dokumentationsarchiv des
Österreichischen Widerstandes -- DÖW]."
Recent remarks made by Haider demonstrate that his right-wing views
have changed little over the years. In 1995 he dubbed Nazi concentration
camps "punishment camps" and former members of the Waffen-SS, men
"who had remained loyal to their principles." In September 1998 he equated
the sufferings of the Sudetendeutschen, who were driven out of Czechoslovakia
after World War II, with those of the Jews during the war. Haider also
accused B'nai B'rith of trying him in secret because it had lodged charges
against him, citing the Verbotsgesetz, for his remarks on ex-Waffen-SS
soldiers. This notion of a secret trial at a B'nai B'rith lodge meeting first
surfaced in October 1996 in a parliamentary question by FPÖ chief whip
Ewald Stadler. On another occasion, Haider referred to foreign doctors
working in Austria as "bush niggers" (Buschneger). Moreover, a parliamentary
colleague of his who claimed that immigration was undermining the
purity of the German people (Umvolkung) was supported by Haider in the
subsequent controversy.
On 1 May 1998, the FPÖ launched its own trade union, the FGÖ.
According to Haider, the existing trade union (ÖGB), dominated by the
Social Democrats, was too supportive of foreign workers and not a legitimate
representative of the workers.

EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS AND EXTREMIST ACTIVITY
Links between the FPÖ and the extreme right are manifold, most significantly
with the Freiheitliche Akademieverbände. These associations issue
the monthly magazine Aula, which has become even more extremist of late.
The former editor, Herwig Nachtmann, was found guilty under the
Verbotsgesetz in 1995 for publishing an article denying the Holocaust.
Nachtmann's replacement is Otto Scrinzi, a former member of the NSDAP
and ex-member of parliament for the FPÖ. In early 1998 the German right-wing
extremist Jürgen Schwab joined the magazine staff. He had previously
gained prominence within the Deutscher Freundeskreis Franken (DFF),
which served as a haven for activists of neo-Nazi organizations banned by
German law. Schwab issued the magazine Junges Franken, which is part of
the National Media Group of the Berlin-Brandenburger-Zeitung (BBZ),
described in 1996 by the Federal German Office for the Defense of the
Constitution (BfVS) as "the neo-Nazi newspaper with the highest circulation."
Schwab has participated in a number of extreme right mass gatherings in
recent years, most notably "National Resistance Day" (Tag des nationalen
Widerstandes) in Passau in February 1998, an event organized by the NPD.
It is therefore not surprising that leading NPD officials write for Aula, as do
prominent FPÖ functionaries.
Close links to Aula are also maintained by the Ring Freiheitlicher
Studenten (RFS), a student organization and cadre for the FPÖ. The RFS has
been prominent on the extreme right-wing scene since the 1950s and issues
the magazine Der Ring, which caused a furor in October 1996 by publishing
an anti-Semitic caricature. In issue no. 13/ 98, Schwab expressed his hope
that historical revisionism would be successful in its attempt to deny the
Holocaust: "The rulers in both German states [Austria, Germany], who have
based their legitimacy to a great extent on 'Auschwitz', now realize the
danger which emanates from the new phase of historical revisionism."
Schwab considers existing legal measures against neo-Nazi "revisionism"
(Holocaust denial) as "censorship laws."
RFS and Aula have their base in the Burschenschaften (fraternities of
uniformed students), the Pan-Germanic, exclusively male clubs at the
universities, which have traditionally served as centers for the indoctrination
of middle class youth in extreme right-wing ideology. Leading FPÖ
politicians, including Haider, and well-known right-wing ideologues were,
and continue to be, members of such clubs. One of their yearly events is a
memorial ceremony on 8 May 1998 to mark the capitulation of Grossdeutschland
(Greater Germany) in 1945. Another event in May was a
conference held on the premises of the notorious Viennese Burschenschaft
Olympia -- a member of the umbrella organization Deutsche Burschenschaft,
the German Student Fraternity (nearly 20.000 members) -- to
celebrate the centenary of the birth of the fascist philosopher Julius Evola. It
was attended by prominent neo-fascists from Germany, Belgium, Italy
and Hungary. In October, German and Austrian right-wing extremists
were present at the so-called Kulturtage (culture days), organized by Otto
Scrinzi in his capacity as chairman of Österreichisches Kulturwerk,
Carinthia.
That same month another international meeting of the extreme right took
place in Offenhausen, Upper Austria, at the invitation of the so-called
political academy of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für demokratische Politik
(AFP). The AFP is composed of a hard core of extreme right-wing cadres
who coordinate the activities of like-minded groups at home and abroad. At
the last such meeting one of the speakers was Josef Feldner of the Kärntner
Heimatdienst (Carinthian Heimat Service -- KHD), who has appeared on
previous occasions. The KHD, with about 10,000 members, considers itself
a "lobby" for "German Carinthians" and maintains close links with the FPÖ.
The KHD's main activity is inciting against the Slovenian minority in southern
Austria. The intellectual head of AFP is Konrad Windisch, who was given
a one-year probationary sentence in 1996 for infringing the Verbotsgesetz.
The charges were based on Windisch's writings, as well as on articles and
book reviews he edited in the AFP newspaper, which cast doubt on the
Holocaust. Windisch lost his appeal to the Supreme Court in summer 1998,
but FPÖ members of parliament tried to undermine the prosecution's case
through their submissions to the minister of justice during parliamentary
question time.
The 1998 annual meeting at Ulrichsberg in Carinthia led to a
parliamentary question on the part of the FPÖ, which criticized the fact that
the Austrian secret police had detained and questioned some of the
participants. While the FPÖ tried to depict this gathering as a harmless
reunion of war veterans, according to the Austrian Federal Ministry of the
Interior, the event is a meeting place for neo-Nazis and extreme right-wingers,
which explains the presence of the police. The main organizers of
the Ulrichsberg gathering are Waffen-SS veterans and the tone of the
speeches is aggressively revanchist.
Former members of the Waffen-SS, who are still convinced of the
"legitimacy" of their war against "bolshevism" and "world Jewry," are
organized into the ex-servicemen's society Kameradschaft IV (K IV). The
K IV, supported by Haider, constantly strives to deny or play down the war
crimes committed by the Waffen-SS, a trend which can also be observed in
its magazine Die Kameradschaft. The official Austrian ex-servicemen's
federation Österreichischer Kameradschaftsbund (ÖKB) has never
distanced itself from K IV. Another organization which makes the annual
pilgrimage to Ulrichsberg is the Österreichischer Turnerbund (Austrian
Gymnastics Association -- ÖTB). The ÖTB is a sports organization with
70,000 members organized in branches throughout Austria. The ideology
apparent in the education of ÖTB sport instructors is close to right-wing
extremism, and thus children and teenagers come into contact with pan-German
and extreme right-wing ideology at a comparatively early age.
However, the ÖTB as a whole is still considered a respectable society, not
least because politicians who do not belong to the extreme right wing are
ÖTB members or supporters. Although stressing that it is a purely "non-political"
sports organization, the ÖTB attempts to promote, through
"education of a nationally conscious community," the doctrines espoused in
the last century by the German nationalist and anti-Semite Friedrich Ludwig
Jahn, who is remembered for his phrase: "Poles, French, clerics, landlords
and Jews are Germany's misfortune!"
Other regular meetings of the extreme right with international
participation are organized by Deutsches Kulturwerk Europäischen
Geistes (DKEG), which has its headquarters in Graz. DKEG "guest weeks"
have been held annually since 1991, but after the Austrian police intervened
and questioned German neo-Nazis present, the conference organizers,
mindful of the negative publicity, transferred their meetings to a German
venue. The DKEG is also involved in publishing the newsletter Huttenbriefe
für Volkstum, Kultur, Wahrheit und Recht.
The DKEG's chief ideologue is Herbert Schweiger, who served a similar
role within the Nationalistische Front, an organization banned in Germany
in 1992. Schweiger is a former member of the Waffen-SS who published the
book Evolution und Wissen. Neuordnung der Politik (Evolution and
Knowledge: The New Political Order -- 1995), in which he tried to unite the
splintered German and Austrian "national movement" on a programmatic
basis. Because his ideology closely resembles that of the former NSDAP, he
was charged under the Verbotsgesetz in 1997 and his book was confiscated
in Germany as well as in Austria. His clashes with the authorities, however,
have not prevented Schweiger from disseminating his views; he spoke, for
example, at National Resistance Day in Passau, Germany.
The Partei Neue Ordnung (New Order Party -- PNO) issues a
newsletter, PNO News, which incites hatred against Jews, anti-fascists,
Freemasons and all those who do not fit its extreme right-wing weltanschauung.
In the summer 1998 issue, for example, it published an announcement
by the Neue Jugendoffensive (New Youth Offensive -- NJO) for a
skinhead concert to be held in Mönchhof (Burgenland) on 15 August.
Among those billed to appear was the "nationalist" songwriter and singer
Jörg Hähnel, a leading figure of the German NPD and a close collaborator
of Robert Dürr, a former member of the FPÖ and current chairman of the
PNO. When the concert was advertised, the local district council banned it.
Neo-Nazis from Austria, Germany and Hungary were expected, and the
police detained some skinheads who had arrived at Mönchhof despite the
ban. Knives, coshes and a loaded pistol were found on their persons.
Just before the concert date, Dürr's farm was searched by police, who
confiscated a large amount of illegal propaganda. Faced with the charge of
infringing the Verbotsgesetz and mocking religious teachings, Dürr
announced that he was withdrawing from politics and dissolving his PNO.
Although the PNO newsletter seems to have ceased publication, Dürr has
not left the political stage. He has issued, in pamphlet form, a new newsletter
entitled Recht und Freiheit, in which he depicts himself as a "victim of an
anti-fascist conspiracy" conducted against him by the police, politicians and
the judiciary. The suspension of the PNO's activities is described by Dürr as
"a structural rearrangement of the freedom struggle," resulting from police
investigations against him and his associates and leading to a political
"correction of nationalist structures." Dürr's new orientation should be taken
seriously since there is evidence of links between his group and the NJO, as
well as with skinhead elements.
Various activists on the extreme right-wing scene in Austria have lost
influence as a result of the Verbotsgesetz. Walter Ochensberger, for example,
who was released from prison on 20 February 1995, has difficulty publishing
his journal Phoenix on a regular basis. Gerd Honsik, who fled to Spain in
1992 to escape an 18-month prison sentence, still publishes Halt which,
inter alia, advertises anti-Semitic publications.
There has been a sharp increase in recruits to the militant skinhead scene
in western Austria (Upper Austria, Salzburg, Tyrol, Vorarlberg) in recent
years. Violent clashes, assaults and slogan daubing are reported almost
weekly. The groups act relatively autonomously, as "leaderless resistance,"
but have, in some areas at least, contact with older extreme right-wing cadres
and fraternal groups across the border.

ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIVITIES
Propaganda
Besides the standard anti-Semitic propaganda disseminated by extreme right-wing
elements in Austria, an older, religiously-motivated hostility toward
Jews, propagated by conservative and fundamentalist members of the
Catholic Church, has been increasingly manifest in recent times. In
December 1997 an extremely anti-Semitic article on medieval ritual murders,
by the conservative theologian Robert Prantner, appeared in the weekly
right-wing Zur Zeit of Andreas Mölzer, an advisor to Haider (see ASW
1997/ 8). Prantner was defended by Stadler, the chief whip of the FPÖ, who
claimed the allegation was "a malicious insinuation." The DÖW immediately
submitted Prantner's article for examination by the state prosecutor and the
Press Council. While the latter condemned Prantner's anti-Semitic outburst,
the former saw no grounds to press charges.
Prantner, now a retired professor of the Catholic Academy in
Heiligenkreuz (Lower Austria), spoke at the annual Anderl-Feier in Rinn on
12 July 1998 (see previous reports). The event is widely advertised in
extreme right-wing publications and about 400 persons continue to attend
the ceremonies, which are expressly forbidden by the Catholic Church. A
mouthpiece for the Anderl cult is Anderl-Bote, issued by suspended Catholic
chaplain Gottfried Melzer. The newsletter supports Prantner and praises
Stadler for standing up for the theologian.
Melzer is the author of the brochure "Ritualmorde und Hostien-schändungen
als Werke des Hasses der Gegenkirche" (Ritual Murders and
Host Desecration) in which he accuses the Jews and the Freemasons of
"controlling, establishing and executing world domination." Another charge
is that Hitler (" 50 percent Jewish") persecuted the Jews at the behest of a
"Jewish controlled Freemason lodge" in order to enhance the reputation of
the Jews. The Jews, according to Melzer, were also responsible for World
War II. The greater part of the brochure is taken up with a description of
ritual murders of Christians by Jews, especially Christian children. DÖW
reported the case to the authorities and Melzer had to face trial in Steyr in
early March 1999 for incitement to hatred. He was sentenced to six months
on probation.
As in previous years, some 300 conservative Catholics attended a service
in the Karlskirche in Vienna in September to commemorate the Turkish siege
of Vienna in 1683. Prantner and Stadler were present for the sermon of the
military chaplain Siegfried Lochner. Despite the ban of the Catholic Church
(Vatican Council II) on anti-Semitic liturgical passages, Lochner still uses the
phrase "pray for the faithless Jews" at the Good Friday liturgical service. In
the Karlskirche Lochner warned: "The Asiatic hordes are not, as in 1683,
standing outside the gates of Vienna; today they live among us. The danger
we now face is more dangerous and lethal than it was in 1683."
Stadler said that he was "delighted" with Lochner's sermon and compared
the chaplain with "the great preacher Abraham a Santa Clara," who incited
hatred of "our enemies the Jews" in the 17th century, accusing them of
ritual murder, desecration of the host, poisoning wells and spreading the
plague.

Internet. On the Bürgerschutz Österreich site, former FPÖ activist Peter Kurt
Weiss and computer expert Frank Swoboda advertise publications which are
either anti-Semitic or conform to the "world conspiracy" theories of the far
right. Several Austrian Internet providers refused to carry this propaganda,
but the Ostara homepage is still available, thanks to an American provider.
Swoboda's contacts with American neo-Nazis on the Internet go back to
1996 when he established links with Don Black of Stormfront (the homepage
of the neo-Nazis), and a key co-coordinator of extreme right-wing
propaganda in the net. Swoboda is currently under investigation by the
Austrian public prosecutor on suspicion of National Socialist activities.
Ostara is a conglomeration of sites promoting the ideology of the Austrian
extreme right. Apart from information about neo-Nazi and extreme right-wing
groups, including their Internet addresses, the website contains articles
which minimize the Holocaust and disseminate anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi
ideology. Espousing "a democratic, revolutionary ... anti-Freemason and anti-New
World Order, for freedom of expression and against left-wing opinion
terror," the website promotes publications such as The Auschwitz Lie, The
Protocols of Zion and Jewish Ritual Murders. The Lachout website on the
Ostara homepage is dedicated to the activities of Emil Lachout, who falsified
documents to prove the arguments of Holocaust deniers. It focuses
especially on his altercations with the Austrian authorities and his claim that
the Verbotsgesetz is "anti-constitutional." Lachout's page also includes copies
of documents pertaining to his court cases and an article denying the
existence of gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps.
The website of the Austrian anti-Semite and Holocaust denier Wolfgang
Fröhlich is also linked to the Ostara homepage. Charged with infringing the
Verbotsgesetz, Fröhlich spent two weeks in investigative custody in
December 1996 and is currently facing charges of Nazi activities in
connection with his website.
The Ostara homepage also hosts a website called Österreichische Landsmannschaft
which denies the Holocaust and incites the public to oppose the
Wehrmachts exhibition (see previous reports) which, as in Germany,
provoked an ongoing public controversy in Austria. In October 1998 the
Ostara homepage again attacked the Verbotsgesetz, threatening: "We have
noted the names of all those historians, such as Prof. Gerhard Jagschitz
[author of an expert report used in court against Holocaust denier Gerd
Honsik], judges, public prosecutors and of ministers of justice who have
applied this law to continuously persecute persons of different views and
scientists, and to put them behind bars. The time will come when these venal
minions in the service of world Jewry will stand before a firing squad."

ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA
Another widespread form of anti-Semitism is manifested in attempts to
obliterate the memory of crimes committed in the Nazi era. Most extreme
right-wing publications are openly anti-Semitic when discussing the attempts
of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution or their families to seek restitution for
confiscated property. The Jews are depicted as "good but greedy
businessmen" who misuse the discussion on the Holocaust for their own
financial benefit. This line of incitement is adopted by the FPÖ journal Neue
Freie Zeitung (36/ 98), which described the Holocaust as "a source of
revenue," "a cash cow" being milked by the Jews, and "as a means of
pressure with killer argument quality in order to satisfy their own economic
interests." It also stated that "the Holocaust alone is said to have claimed four
to six million victims, depending on the historical source you read." The
journal feigns sympathy for the victims worthy of the protection of Ed Fagan
[US attorney who represents claims of Jewish survivors] and his ilk who
"represent restitution and compensation claims in such a way that they walk
all over the victims and themselves become perpetrators." Similar advice is
given by Mölzer (Zur Zeit, 34/ 98): "It would be a bad idea for the local
[Jewish] Kultusgemeinde to believe it could proceed like the American
'crocodile lawyers´." Mölzer distinguishes between Austrian Jews and the rest
of the population. According to him, the ordinary citizen should not have the
feeling that he or she "will eternally have to play the milk cow for demands
for which there is no longer any legal or moral basis." In another article, he
asks provocatively, "Who rules the world?" (Zur Zeit 36/ 98). Mölzer uses the
anti-Semitic stereotype of the puppet-masters in America who are "without
doubt those forces that control the banking system and the media."
Apparently as a result of these allegations, threat letters and insults were
received at a Jewish old home in Vienna. The letters contained warnings,
rebukes and newspaper clippings in which Jews were accused of controlling
the American media, economics and politics.
In 1998 the role of the Wehrmacht during World War II and the attempts
to recover confiscated (" Aryanized") Jewish property were widely discussed
subjects among the Austrian public. A propaganda campaign against the
Wehrmacht exhibition was unleashed by extreme right-wing as well as
conservative circles. The most widely read daily newspaper in Austria, Neue
Kronen-Zeitung, was foremost in this agitation, giving space in its columns
to ultra-right-wing and revisionist commentators.
A counter-exhibition organized by the ex-soldiers association ÖKB
opened in Salzburg in March 1998, giving prominence to paintings of Walter
Gross, an ex-prisoner of the Soviets. Gross was Obersturmführer in the First
SS Tank Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler and has often lectured to extreme
right-wing groups, such as AFP. A further scandal broke out when the
city of Salzburg, which had refused the organizers of the Wehrmacht
exhibition help of any kind, saw fit to place the town hall at the disposal of
the counter-exhibition. In Vienna, Simon Wiesenthal, Walter Manoschek and
Albert Lichtblau protested in a letter to Federal Chancellor Klima, that the
counter-exhibition was being supported by prominent politicians -- the
mayor of Salzburg Dechant (ÖVP), Alderman Mitterdorfer (FPÖ) -- and
notorious right-wing extremists such as Otto Rosskopf.
Attempts by the Austrian authorities to prosecute persons who play down
the Holocaust have led the proponents of Holocaust denial to use other
strategies. The myth of the Wehrmacht's "preventive" war against the Soviet
Union and war crimes allegedly carried out by the Allies are two such
examples. Last year a Festschrift for the British Holocaust denier David Irving
was published under the title Wagnis Wahrheit (Risking the Truth) by the
German Arndt-Verlag, edited by Reinhard Uhle-Wettler. The back cover
features a photograph of Irving and Pedro Varela, the internationally active
Spanish neo-Nazi who was recently sentenced to five years' imprisonment
(see Spain). Irving is persona non grata in Germany and Austria and faces
charges based on the Verbotsgesetz should he enter Austria. Three well-known
Austrians wrote for the Festschrift: Lothar Hübelt, a professor at
Vienna University who has links to the FPÖ, contributed the revised version
of one of his lectures to the volume. Hübelt finds no fault with Irving's
reputation since "historical discussions which are decided in court rebound
on the state." Hübelt does not think much of such proceedings, as he
admitted to an Austrian newspaper, and the warrant for the arrest of the
British historian "speaks for Irving and against those who issued it."
University lecturer Heinz Magenheimer, of the academy of the Ministry
for Defense, is represented in the book with a contribution on "the strategic
position of Greater Germany in spring 1944." Magenheimer made a name for
himself on the "revisionist" scene in 1995 by resurrecting the legend of the
"preventive" war of the Germans against the Soviets from 22 June 1941. He
has now distanced himself from this scene. His ministry has confirmed that
Magenheimer refused to contribute to the Irving Festschrift as his employers
had forbidden it.
Ernst Topitsch, a philosopher from Graz, wrote a piece for the Irving
volume entitled "Against an Empire of Lies." Calling himself "a partisan of
intellectual freedom," Topitsch is also known as a contributor to the extreme
right magazine Aula.
On a more positive note, on 1 October 1998 the rector of Vienna
University, Alfred Ebenbauer, admitted that Jewish staff members of the
medical school had been persecuted during the Nazi era and asked the
victims for forgiveness. More than 170 Jewish staff members were dismissed
during that period. In addition, on 28 October 1998 the Evangelical churches
in Austria issued a statement condemning the silence of the churches during
the Holocaust. The Austrian Post Office Savings Bank (Österreichische
Postsparkasse -- PSK) is seeking, through the Internet, Jewish victims whose
deposits were confiscated by the Nazis, in order to find a way to compensate
them.
According to an agreement which took effect on 30 March 1998, Austria
will renew its legal assistance to American investigators hunting Nazi war
criminals. The cooperation had been discontinued for eight years in protest
against the exclusion of Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from entering the
US because Waldheim had lied about his role during World War II.
The Austrian government agreed to turn over the remainder of Nazi gold
confiscated in 1938. The sum amounts to about $8 million and will be
presented to the International Nazi Persecution Relief Fund set up in 1997 to
benefit Holocaust survivors. In addition, in June 1998 Austria's Creditanstalt,
a wartime subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Bank, was included in the $18
billion lawsuit filed by Holocaust survivors against Deutsche Bank and
Dresdner Bank (see Germany). On 24 August, the bank stated that it would
conduct a new investigation to prove it had no record of being involved in
the transactions of gold robbed from Jews during the war.

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM
Court Cases and Legal Proceedings
The police scored a significant coup against right-wing terror on 1 October
1997 when it arrested Franz Fuchs in Gralla, Styria. When his car was
stopped by police Fuchs detonated a homemade bomb which blew off both
his hands and injured the policemen. Fuchs, found guilty of murder, was
sentenced to life imprisonment. Four people were killed and ten were
injured by the 25 letter bombs and three pipe bombs for which Fuchs was
responsible. The court in Graz ruled that Fuchs acted alone and that the BBA
organization (see previous reports) existed only in his mind.
The Salzburg provincial court ordered a search of fourteen houses in
November 1997 belonging to right-wing extremists in Upper Austria,
Salzburg and Vienna. Included were the homes of Günther Reinthaler, a
leading ex-official of VAPO (see previous reports) and Karl Polacek, former
chairman of the banned Freiheitliche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (FAP) in
Hessen, who was expelled from Germany in 1992. The Austrian authorities
brought him to trial in November 1998 on charges of encouraging violence
and threats, based on an article by Polacek in his magazine Postille
Braunauer Ausguck, which applauded the fact that the so-called BBA had
sent a letter bomb to the vice-mayor of Lübeck. He was also accused of
promoting the Nazi doctrine and denying Nazi crimes. Polacek is appealing
his three-year sentence, part of which is probationary.
One of Polacek's closest collaborators is Friedrich Rebhandl, ex-spokesman
for the NDP in Salzburg and editor of the extreme right-wing periodical
Der Volkstreue, who denied that the murder of the Jews in the Nazi gas
chambers ever happened. Rebhandl, a former member of the Waffen-SS, was
sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment. The trials of cadres of VAPO, once
the most militant neo-Nazi group in Austria, continued in 1998. Karin Küssel,
the wife of the imprisoned VAPO leader, was accused of participation in
activities punishable under the Verbotsgesetz after taking part in VAPO
meetings. She was sentenced to fifteen months imprisonment. Other VAPO
militants who were sentenced and released in the intervening years have
rejoined the extreme right-wing scene. However, unlike in the period
leading up to 1992, they keep out of the public eye, preferring the legal
cover of membership in a Burschenschaft or other clubs close to the FPÖ.
In April the Ministry of the Interior announced that it would apply to the
courts for an order to dissolve the Verein Dichterstein Offenhausen,
while banning its activities forthwith. Consequently, the annual meeting of
the club (founded in 1963) had to be canceled. The monument that the club
erected, the "poet's stone" (Dichterstein), is inscribed with Nazi racist slogans
(Sippenreinheit, Artbewusstsein) and had become a place of pilgrimage for
Austrian and foreign extremists of the right, including Gerd Honsik and Bela
Ewald Althans.
The club itself had been split before the authorities acted. Chairman
Ottokar Schöfer resigned because, as he stated in March 1998, the club
committee had rejected his motion to engrave the names of Jewish authors
on the stone. The FPÖ attacked the action taken by the Ministry of the
Interior against Dichterstein and raised the matter in parliament. FPÖ
lobbying was unsuccessful and the police in Upper Austria announced in
January 1999 that Dichterstein had been dissolved under the Verbotsgesetz.