Figures from the Austrian interior ministry for 1998 report that 8 crimes motivated by antisemitism were committed in Austria, representing just over half the number recorded in 1997 (17), the same as the number recorded in 1996 (8) and considerably fewer than in 1995 (25).
Events continue to suggest that the traditional Austrian antisemitism which marks the darker side of the country's history persists with some resilience among sections of the Austrian population. However this must be weighed against the recent efforts of politicians, academics and others to confront the legacy openly and to denounce racism and antisemitism.
The xenophobic Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) led by Jörg Haider, now the country's third largest party, scored its biggest electoral success to date in March 1999. In state elections in Carinthia, a traditional FPÖ stronghold, the party became the largest in the state parliament by taking 42 per cent of the vote, re-installing Haider as governor of Carinthia, the post he was forced to resign in 1991 after he praised Hitler's employment policies. In the June 1999 European elections the party emerged again as the country's third largest, although its share of the vote slipped somewhat to 23.24 per cent (giving it five MEPs).
While Haider enjoys continuing electoral success, the far-right scene is increasingly marginalized. The reason appears to be twofold: the police seem to have acquired a firmer grip on far-right activities, primarily as a result of their investigations into the 1993-6 letter-bombing campaign; and a number of successful prosecutions of individuals for neo-Nazi activity has to some extent deprived these movements of their leaders.
By far the most spectacular recent legal development was the March 1999 conviction of Franz Fuchs for the racist letter-bombing campaign of 1993-6. Fuchs was sentenced to life imprisonment in a mental institution.
Demographic data
Total population: 8 million
Urban popuulation: 64 per cent
Jewish population: 8,000 (mainly in Vienna)
Other minorities: Slovenes, Croats, ex-Yugoslavs, Turks, Roma and Sinti
Religion: 75 per cent of the population is Roman Catholic
Political data
Political system: federal (bicameral) parliamentary democracy
Ruling coalition (since the December 1995 general election): Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ, Social Democratic Party)-Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP, Austrian People's Party). The SPÖ was led by Chancellor Franz Vranitzky until January 1997 when he resigned and was replaced by Viktor Klima, the former finance minister.
Head of state: Thomas Klestil was re-elected as federal president on 19 April 1998 with 63.4 per cent of the vote, having received the backing of the FPÖ and the ÖVP. In the run-up to the election Klestil - standing as an independent rather than, as previously, as an ÖVP candidate - stated that he viewed all the parties represented in parliament as democratic bodies whose members should not be excluded from high office, a statement widely interpreted as a legitimization of the FPÖ, and one condemned by the SPÖ, which officially backed no candidate.
Opposition parties: Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ, Freedom Party of Austria) led by Jörg Haider; Die Grünen (Greens); Liberales Forum (LiF, Liberal Forum)
Next general election: October 1999
Economic data
GDP: US$206,232 (World Bank, 30 April 1999)
GDP: US$27,920 (World Bank, 30 April 1999)
GDP growth: 4 per cent (World Bank, 30 April 1999)
Inflation 1997: 1.4 per cent (Austrian Central Statistical Office, ÖSTAT)
Unemployment January-April 1999: 4.5 per cent (ÖSTAT)
Currency: Austrian schilling (US$1=AS12.69, end 1997; US$1=AS13.34, June 1999)
Jews have lived in Vienna and its environs since the tenth century. It was not until the modern period that they were dispersed geographically throughout what is now Austria.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the confiscation of property, economic restrictions, expulsions and, finally, persecutions became so commonplace that Austria became known among Jews as 'the bloodstained land'.
From the end of the eighteenth century, with the growing centralization of government and empire, the position of the Jews in Austria became increasingly linked with the history of the empire as a whole. Under the rule of Joseph II (1780-90) and the influence of his Toleranzpatent, assimilation was encouraged, and Jews were even admitted into the army.
In the late nineteenth century antisemitism became more widespread in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Catholic antisemitism found expression through Karl Lüger and his Christian Social Party, and pan-German nationalist antisemitism became integrated into the policies of Georg von Schönerer and his German National Party.
In the 1930s the Christian Social Party's amalgamation of religious, economic, cultural and racial prejudice, together with its reluctance to introduce discriminatory measures against Jews, was at a disadvantage against Hitler's racial 'antisemitism of reason' and the Nuremberg Laws. Yet the stated objectives of these two strands of antisemitism were not dissimilar. In 1938 Austria was incorporated into the German Third Reich, and the Nazis' racial policies were applied.
The Austrian Second Republic, founded in 1945, repudiated National Socialism. Antisemitism was redefined officially as a relic of a hated regime. While the negative connotations associated with the term 'antisemitism' did not eliminate the problem of anti-Jewish prejudice, public expressions of hostility towards Jews were seen to transgress, at least implicitly, recognized normative expectations of post-Auschwitz Austrian political debate and, as such, were considered largely unrelated to the wider political culture.
The 'Waldheim affair' in the 1980s was a watershed in the development of the post-war 'Jewish question', because it witnessed the willingness of a major political party (ÖVP) to appeal to antisemitic prejudice - coded in an appropriate post-Auschwitz idiom - and indicated the potential for success of such an appeal. A 1991 poll showed that even after five years of Waldheim's international isolation, a significant percentage of Austrians still held 'the Jews' accountable for the 'Waldheim affair'. The same opinion survey revealed the alarming resilience of anti-Jewish stereotypes in Austria. Waldheim's retirement from public office in 1992 removed the focus of hostility towards Jews. Yet any allusion to the World Jewish Congress (Waldheim's strongest critic in the 1980s) usually still elicits a venomous response from the tabloid press and some conservative politicians.
In the early 1990s, with the rise of Haider's FPÖ, so-called 'foreigners' became the principal focus of political intolerance.
The results of a 1996 opinion poll of Austrian
attitudes towards Jews, conducted by University of Vienna sociologist Hilde Weiss,
suggested the persistence of negative Jewish stereotypes among a significant portion of
the population. In response to the statement, 'The Jews are too influential in Austria',
34 per cent agreed (either 'completely' or 'somewhat') and 56 per cent disagreed (either
'completely' or 'somewhat'); 26 per cent agreed with the statement, 'A lot has been
exaggerated in regard to concentration camps and Jewish persecution', and 66 per cent
disagreed; 49 per cent agreed that 'Jews dominate world affairs' (41 per cent disagreed),
while 18 per cent agreed that 'Jewish access to influential professions' should be
controlled or numerically limited (74 per cent disagreed).
One long-standing controversy surrounding the city of Wels's method of dealing with its National Socialist and antisemitic legacy has come to an end. The central issue was Otto-Kernstock-Straße, the street named in 1955 by the Wels city council after the antisemitic priest Otto Kernstock, author not only of the second Austrian national anthem but also of the Nazi anthem 'Hakenkreuz-Lied' (Swastika Song). It is because of this latter accomplishment, and less because of his antisemitism per se - Vienna, after all, still honours the memory of the famously antisemitic Viennese mayor Karl Lüger (see Antisemitic legacy) - that the controversy arose. Members of the local Sozialistische Jugend (SJ, Socialist Youth), the Greens and representatives of the Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes (DÖW, Archive of the Austrian Resistance) made several attempts over the years to have the street renamed, but the mayor of Wels, Karl Bregartner (SPÖ), rejected their requests (see also Parties, organizations, movements). In May 1997, however, the Wels city council finally voted to rename the street Thomas-Mann-Straße.
The example set in Wels of protesting the continued presence of objects celebrating Austrian Nazis has been followed in Graz and Salzburg. Kurt Murtinger, head of political education for the SPÖ in Graz, vowed to take up the issue of Graz's Kernstockgasse in the city council. As early as 1995 Green politicians Gudrun Hümer and Peter Pilz had temporarily covered up an inscription honouring Kernstock with a black sheet to call attention to this issue. Murtinger's plan, following the vote in the Wels city council to rename Otto Kernstock-Straße, is to have the street renamed after Elias Grünschlag, a prominent member of the Graz Jewish community who helped organize the evacuation of Jewish children to Palestine before such transports became impossible in November 1939.
Likewise, the SJ in Salzburg has called attention to Nazi relics there. Youth activists have focused on Thorak-Straße and Damisch-Straße. Josef Thorak is often described as 'the Führer's sculptor'; Heinrich Damisch was a member of the Nazi Party from 1932 onwards and a notorious antisemite. Thorak is buried in a place of honour, while in the 1950s Damisch received the gold medal of Salzburg as well as the gold medal of honour from the Austrian Republic. Following the lead of the Wels SJ, their Salzburg counterparts covered the street signs.
In Wels in January 1998 the Moritz Etzold Hall of the Österreichischer Turnerbund (ÖTB, Austrian Gymnastics Association, see Parties, organizations, movements), named after another important Nazi, became the Wels Gymnasium, and the 4-F symbol of the ÖTB that adorned it (bearing a striking resemblance to the swastika) was covered up.
The SJ in Salzburg has also been campaigning for the removal of the 4-F symbol decorating the Jahn gymnasium of the ÖTB. This symbol has already been removed in Ried and Wels; in other towns, such as Ybbs, Tulln and Amstetten, campaigns to have it removed have been initiated.
Controversy arose in April 1999 when the village of St Wolfgang (Upper Austria) named a lakeside pathway after Dr Franz Xaver Rais, a prominent Nazi who came from the village. The mayor, Johannes Peinsteiner, rejected the complaints and said that Rais 'had done much for the community'.
In the framework of these campaigns, the SJ collects information for the Katalog der 'NS-Flecken' in Österreich (Catalogue of 'National Socialist Spots' in Austria). Included in this catalogue are street names (such as those discussed above), 'brown' monuments and forgotten sites of resistance. The main aim of the project is to bring to public awareness the fact that commemorations of the victims of National Socialism are meaningless when markers lauding Nazis and fascists remain in towns and villages.
The exhibition Vernichtungskrieg - Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941-1944 (War of Extermination - Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-1944), produced by the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) in Hamburg, remains the focus of heated controversy (see Germany). In Austria it was successfully shown in Vienna and Innsbruck (1995), in Klagenfurt and Linz (1996), in Graz (December 1997-January 1998) and Salzburg (1998). The exhibition documents the involvement of certain Wehrmacht units, and the enthusiastic participation of individual soldiers, in the murder of suspected partisans and their supporters and hostages in the south-east theatre; in the murder of Jews and other civilians by the Wehrmacht's 6th Army during its advance towards Stalingrad; and Wehrmacht murder policies during its three-year occupation of Byelorussia. Though the evidence presented in the exhibition has been known to military historians and Holocaust researchers for years, the exhibition has helped demolish one of the most cherished myths in post-war Germany and Austria, that of the 'thoroughly decent' Wehrmacht. How one reacts to the exhibition remains a litmus test for Holocaust remembrance for politicians from all mainstream political parties.
Individual political leaders at the national level - including President Thomas Klestil, the first president of the Austrian lower house of parliament, Heinz Fischer (SPÖ), Interior Minister Caspar Einem (SPÖ), Green and LiF members of the Austrian and European parliaments, the mayor of Graz Alfred Stingl (SPÖ) and union leaders such as Hans Sallmutter - have offered to serve as honorary sponsors of the exhibition. (Klestil declined to serve because of the conventions of presidential protocol, but expressed gratitude to the Reemstma Foundation for having funded the exhibition.) Several dozen other prominent individuals have joined a committee of support. Other politicians have done their best to evade the issue (not a single national leader of the ÖVP has offered to serve as honorary sponsor), while still others, mainly from the FPÖ and ÖVP, and primarily at the provincial or local level, refuse to provide financial support (or even space) for the exhibition. Some repeatedly attack the exhibition for being an attempt to criminalize the entire war-time generation. In Graz, in preparation for the December 1997 opening of the exhibition, the mayor Alfred Stingl summoned representatives of supporters and opponents of the exhibition to a meeting to exchange views, but representatives of neither the local ÖVP nor the FPÖ attended. Given the uncertainty about where the exhibition was to be held, the University of Graz, through the good offices of its then rector Helmut Konrad, offered to host it.
In March 1998, while the exhibition was on show in Salzburg, a counter-exhibition opened in that city that was designed to rescue the 'honour' of the Wehrmacht. Entitled 'Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht' (One does not see those in the dark) it was organized by the Erinnern (Remembrance) committee of the largest veteran's association in Austria, the Österreichischer Kameradshaftsbund (ÖKB). Although it denied supporting the exhibition politically or financially, the Salzburg city council reportedly made the functions and banquets suite of the city hall available to it as a venue without charge. Many of the pictures in the counter-exhibition were by Walther Gross, a former lieutenant in the First Panzer Division of the SS. After the war Gross, despite the post-war military ban on former Waffen-SS soldiers, rose to the rank of brigadier in the Austrian army and, after retirement, became a prominent lecturer in neo-Nazi circles. Chancellor Viktor Klima, Simon Wiesenthal and Austrian historians Walter Manoschek and Albert Gross provided evidence of Gross's SS past, and protested the support given to the counter-exhibition - support denied to the Wehrmacht exhibition itself - by prominent politicians, including the mayor of Salzburg and leading city and district councillors, who attended the opening and whose names appear on a list of those backing the event.
Controversy about the planned erection of a Holocaust memorial on Judenplatz in the centre of Vienna continues. Vienna's mayor Michael Häupl enthusiastically took up the idea, originally proposed in 1994 by Simon Wiesenthal, of erecting a monument to commemorate the over 65,000 Austrian Jewish victims of National Socialism. Paul Grosz, the then president of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (Austrian Jewish community), also supported the idea. An international jury chose the design, submitted by award-winning British artist Rachel Whiteread, for a rectangular concrete cubical bookcase with the shelved books turned inside out. The memorial was to have been unveiled on the 58th anniversary of Kristallnacht in November 1996. Judenplatz was also the site of a synagogue destroyed in 1421, after Vienna's Jews were forcibly converted or, if they refused, committed suicide or were burned at the stake in the Erdberg area of Vienna (see Countering antisemitism). After excavation of the site began, however, remains of the synagogue destroyed in the fifteenth century were discovered. As a consequence, the project has been the subject of repeated discussions that have inevitably led to delays, and the monument has still not been erected.
Since Whiteread's winning design was announced, the project has been surrounded by controversy. Some critics find the design aesthetically inadequate (referring to it as the 'concrete block'), but few have seriously suggested abandoning it (though B'nai B'rith has called for its reconsideration). Others do not object to the design itself, but argue that positioning it on Judenplatz will destroy the square's architectural balance. Still others believe that the discovery of remains of the synagogue demands reconsideration of the entire project. One view is that the Whiteread monument should be placed elsewhere, and that the synagogue remains should be fully excavated and displayed as a memorial to the centuries-old Jewish religion and culture in Vienna. Another view, which would place the memorial on its originally planned site and make the synagogue remains visible from transparent panels inside the structure itself, seems to be technically unfeasible. Still others, primarily merchants on or near Judenplatz, have, independently of all aesthetic questions, expressed fear that such a monument could become the target of antisemitic attacks.
Restitution
On 1 June 1995 the Austrian parliament adopted legislation to establish a fund for victims of National Socialism. The law explicitly recognized that this was not intended as Wiedergutmachung (compensation), but as official recognition of Austrian survivors. According to the law all who were victims of the Nazi regime or had to flee the country to avoid persecution, and who were Austrian citizens on 13 March 1938, are entitled to claim compensation. In 1997 AS600 million (c. US$47 million) were set aside for these payments. In the view of Heinz Fischer, the president of the lower house of parliament, the monetary aspect, while important, should be seen as less important than the fact that Austria had finally officially acknowledged the injustice done to victims of National Socialism, and had offered each of them a one-time payment of AS70,000 (c. US$5,500) as a material gesture. Hannah Lessing-Askapa, the secretary-general of the fund, emphasized the positive response the fund had received from claimants. She and Fischer have stated that correspondence suggests that recipients of the money consider Austria's official recognition of their plight to be the most important point.
An interim report of 20 February 1997 stated that the fund had received approximately 23,000 applications from over thirty countries. The youngest applicant was fifty-two, the oldest 104. At that time, a total of 11,367 payments had been made, primarily to people residing in the United States, Israel, Austria and Great Britain. An additional 717 applications had been rejected, because they did not meet the conditions stipulated in the law. One case, which illustrates how rigidly the law can be interpreted, involved a woman who had one child and was pregnant with a second when she was forced to flee Austria after the Anschluß. All three submitted applications. But while the woman and her first child were deemed eligible for the payment, the second child, who was born outside Austria, was ruled ineligible.
On 17 June 1997 Green members of parliament organized a one-day commission of enquiry into the economic damage which victims of National Socialism in Austria had suffered. Although historians and journalists had investigated the question of 'Aryanization' for years, this was the first such enquiry by a parliamentary party. The hearing, which included testimony from individuals as well as experts, considered all types of Jewish goods and property that had been confiscated, acquired through forced sales or otherwise 'Aryanized'. Experts estimated total Jewish wealth in 1939 at c. 2,300 million Reichsmarks (today's equivalent of c. US$80,500 million), of which two-thirds consisted of invested capital and property of large firms, and one-third real estate and small firms. By comparison, the entire annual budget of the Austrian state in 1938 amounted to RM1,300 million.
Since that time investigations into the war-time behaviour of Austrian institutions of all kinds have been initiated. Banks, insurance companies and industrial firms have been hit with class-action suits by Jews claiming compensation. In 1998 Chancellor Klima established the Historikerkommission (committee of historians) to study all aspects of Austria's restitution programme so that those who feel that they have not been fairly compensated may file claims. In addition, as a result of a law enacted in November 1998 (Kunstraubgesetz) providing the legal framework for the return of works of art stolen by the Nazis, a commission of experts was set up to trace looted objects artworks. (For Haider's comments on resitution programmes, see Parties, organizations, movements.)
Attention has also focused on the provenance of artefacts of a rather more grim kind. The physical remains of some Jewish and other victims of the Nazi regime have in some cases been preserved in various universities, research institutes and even museums in both Germany and Austria. In 1942 the Reich ministry of justice declared that corpses of executed Jews and Poles would not be released for burial by relatives but preserved in anatomical institutes. Only the universities of Tübingen (see Germany) and Vienna have so far held formal investigations into their own war-time practices. The war-time University of Vienna's anatomical institute was headed by the Austrian Fascist Dr Eduard Pernkopf, the author of what has become a standard text on human anatomy, still issued by its original publisher, Urban and Schwarzenberg. Although current editions have airbrushed out the Nazi iconography that graced the original, questions remain about whether prisoners served as the subjects of the anatomical drawings. In 1995 Yad Vashem asked the universities of Vienna and Innsbruck to investigate the backgrounds of the subjects in Pernkopf's Anatomy (the anatomical institute at Innsbruck was believed to still be in possession of many of the original specimens). Although this request was denied by both universities (a position still held by the University of Innsbruck), the University of Vienna announced in February 1997 that a special investigation would be conducted, the results of which were published in October 1998 as Untersuchungen Zur Anatomischen Wissenschaft in Wien: 1938-1945 (Investigations into Anatomical Science at Vienna: 1938-1945). While the enquiry found that the almost 1,400 cadavers received by the institute from the Gestapo execution chamber in Vienna had been destroyed by a bomb near the end of the war, it also revealed that some 200 specimens are still in other universities' collections.
A formal investigation is also being considered by the museum of natural history in Vienna. Dr Josef Wastel, the war-time head of the museum's anthropology department, had bought skulls, death masks and busts of Jewish and Polish Holocaust victims from the dean of the medical department at the University of Pozen, Professor Dr Hermann Voss (who used the bodies of victims to prepare remains he then sold for profit). Most of these items, which had been exhibited in the museum's so-called 'race gallery', were turned over the Austrian Jewish community in 1991, and the skulls were buried. However the skulls of the non-Jewish Poles and the death busts of two Jews still remain in the museum's collection, as does the extensive documentation of all these practices.
In January 1999 representatives of Creditanstalt-Bankverein and its parent company, Bank Austria AG, the country's largest banks, met with US former senator Alfonse D'Amato (appointed by US federal judges as a mediator in the case) and Israel Singer, secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress. The latter issued a joint statement to the effect that substantial progress had been made in reaching a settlement between the banks and the Austrian Jews in the USA suing them for their alleged role in 'Aryanization', the forced takeover of Jewish-owned businesses, and in handling assets stolen from Austrian Jews. In May the banks' shareholders in Vienna voted to accept an agreement reached in March whereby they would pay US$40 million to settle the lawsuits: US$30 million to settle claims and to be used for humanitarian purposes, and US$10 million to cover administrative and other expenses as well as to provide an interim claim fund. The banks significantly also agreed to turn over documents implicating Germany's Deutsche Bank AG which faces similar charges (see Germany). Part of the settlement gives the plaintiffs the right to any claims that the Austrian banks might have against the German bank for assets forcibly taken after the Third Reich annexed Austria in March 1938 (Deutsche Bank formally took control of Creditanstalt after annexation). The agreement also includes a list of Austrian companies owned in whole or in part by the banks that would be protected against any future claims.
In February 1999 the commission of experts tracing the origins of art looted by the Nazis identified 250 works formerly owned by the Austrian branch of the Rothschild family, confiscated first in 1938 and again in 1945 when the post-war Austrian state imposed an export ban on the items. The ministry of culture ordered that the works be returned to the family; Elisabeth Gehrer, minister of education and culture, said that the return was 'a bit of justice' demonstrating that 'Austria is signalling a new awareness in coming to terms with its past'. The stolen works in question had, after the war, been absorbed into state museums, including three paintings by Franz Hals exhibited in Vienna's Kunsthistorischen Museum. The collection is to be sold at auction in London.
In March 1999 the New York City-based Claims Conference opened an office in Vienna, headed by Moshe Jahoda, to monitor 'extensive welfare programmes' for victims of the Third Reich in Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Several newpaper articles and a television documentary have been recently highlighting the case of Vienna's musicological collection of Johann Strauss, the Viennese Waltz King, including his handwritten score for Die Fledermaus. During the war the fact of Strauss's Jewish ancestry was overlooked as his music was appropriated as a cornerstone of Teutonic cultural achievement. After the war the composer's surviving Jewish stepdaughter was forced to accept a nominal fee for the family collection, which she was not allowed to sell abroad at a greater profit and which, according to Otto Brusatti, curator of Vienna's music archive, is now valued at some US$48 million. A campaign to return the collection to the composer's descendants is gaining ground as those organizing a June 1999 exhibition in Vienna to mark the centenary of Strauss's death are keen to clarify the provenance of the artefacts before they go on display.
In late June 1999 the commission of experts on looted art decided not to return to Jewish families in North America five paintings by Gustav Klimt that had been stolen by the Nazis and are now worth tens of millions of dollars. The commission agreed however to return 16 drawings by Klimt and 19 porcelain settings. Lawyers for the families said they intended to sue.
Ownership of the Burgenland Jewish communal records continues to be contested. Now housed in a regional archive in Eisenstadt the extensive collection documents the life of the Burgenland Jewish community from 1690 to September 1938 when the Jews were expelled. It includes Jewish communal record books, burial society records as well as school, military and tax lists. The Viennese Jewish community, the legal heir to all Jewish communal property in Austria, requested return of the archive after the war when it resurfaced in Eisenstadt, but was turned down. A request from an organization of Burgenland Jews in Israel was also unsuccessful. The Austrian federal government maintains that the issue is a regional one and cannot therefore intervene, and Burgenland officials say that they cannot legally give the archive away. In 1986 an agreement was reached according to which the archive was to be microfilmed and the film sent to the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem. Although the microfilm was made in 1994, it was not sent to Jerusalem. Hadassah Assouline, director of the Central Archives, says that the 'material chronicles a very important chapter of our history' and is 'no less valuable than bank accounts, buildings, art or any other type of stolen Jewish property'.
War crimes
In February 1999 the Wiesenthal Center reported that the Italian foreign minister, Lamberto Dini, had 'expressed his willingness' to seek the extradition from Austria of Willi Schubernig, who is implicated in the 1944 Ardeatine caves massacre near Rome (see Italy). The Austrian foreign minister, Wolfgang Schussel, was urged to detain Schubernig.
In April 1999 the justice ministry decided to file charges against eighty-four-year-old Dr Heinrich Gross for participating in the 1944 murder of nine of the estimated 700 children killed at the Am Spiegelgrund children's clinic at Steinhof in Vienna. The following month, Gross's lawyers filed a motion objecting to the charges, delaying the opening of the trial. Gross was tried and convicted of a single charge of manslaughter in the 1950s, but the verdict was later overturned by a higher court which ordered a retrial. No retrial was held and the case was dropped. Gross returned to work and became one of Austria's leading neurologists and a senior court psychiatrist. Fresh evidence came to light in 1997, including declassified top-secret papers from the archives of the East German secret police, and in February 1998 Austrian prosecutors moved to seize thousands of papers and 400 brains from Gross's private collection, in an attempt to decide if sufficient evidence existed for a new trial. In a recent interview Gross admitted referring children to a euthanasia board and to leaving windows open to test the effect on children, but denied committing murder. The journalist Marianne Enigl first exposed Dr Gross and his past in 1995 in the news magazine Profil. The proceedings will be the first war crimes trial to be held in Austria for over twenty years.
According to the latest (for 1998) figures issued by the Bundesministerium für Inneres (BMI, Ministry of the Interior) in their report Rechtsextremismus in Österreich (The Far Right in Austria), published in February 1999, a total of 392 incidents was reported in connection with right-wing extremism, including: 122 in which the culprits were unknown; 244 motivated by extreme right-wing ideology (136 of which were solved by year's end), 31 motivated by xenophobia (19 solved) and 8 by antisemitism (4 solved). The 1998 figure of 392 represents a 2 per cent rise on the 1997 figure (384).
Throughout the year police searched the premises of 67 individuals, as a result of which 13 people were detained. Altogether, 41 indictments resulted in convictions, while in 20 cases, the evidence was not sufficient to bring a prosecution.
In addition, 283 incidents motivated by extreme right-wing ideology, xenophobia or antisemitism (some committed in earlier years) were investigated by the police during 1998. Of these, 159 were solved by the year's end. In comparison with 1997, the number of investigations fell by 12.1 per cent (from 322 to 283).
The number of incidents involving contravention of the 1945 law against open support for National Socialism or Nazism (NS-Verbotsgesetz) remained more or less constant from the previous year (198 in 1998 and 197 in 1997) and both years represent the lowest number of such incidents since 1992 - the highest being 313 in 1995 - when the scope of the law was widened (see Legal matters). The 392 reported incidents also included violations of the criminal code - 21 cases of incitement, 109 of other violations including physical injury or property damage, both remaining almost constant in relation to 1997 - 19 violations of the law prohibiting Nazi symbols (down from 30 in 1997), 42 violations of the laws on association (Vereine) (see Legal matters) (up from 30 in 1997), and 3 contraventions of the media law (Mediengesetz).
In the cases of crimes motivated by racism or xenophobia highlighted in the BMI report, the largest victim-group was Turkish immigrants, followed by those from the former Yugoslavia. In one of the most serious, on 21 April 1998, two young skinheads, among a group of six celebrating Hitler's birthday, attacked two persons - one from the Middle East, the other from the former Yugoslavia - by kicking them in the head with heavy, metal-toed boots, seriously injuring one of them. The six went on trial in an Innsbruck court in December 1998 for violations under the NS-Verbotsgesetz.
Four Austrian police officers were found guilty throughout the year of using excessive physical force (158 cases are still pending); according to the US Department of State Human Rights Report for 1998, some of the violence (unspecified) appeared to be racially motivated.
Franz Fuchs, who claimed to be a member of a group called the Bajuwarische Befreiungsarmee (BBA, Bavarian Liberation Army), was found guilty by a Graz court in March 1999 of carrying out the murderous racist bombing campaign that took place between 1993 and 1996, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in a mental institution (see Legal matters). The five series of bombings had included letter-bombs sent to individual politicians, outspoken advocates of a more open immigration policy, doctors who had immigrated to Austria from Syria and Korea, and the stepmother of the then interior minister Caspar Einem; pipe-bombs placed in front of a bilingual elementary school and in a village whose residents are predominantly Croatian-Austrian; and a booby-trap bomb in the Burgenland village of Oberwart. Four members of the Roma community were killed in Oberwart in February 1995, and several people were injured, some severely, by other bombs, the most prominent being a former mayor of Vienna. In a series of lengthy letters laced with racist and xenophobic language, the BBA claimed responsibility for most of these bombings.
After Fuchs was arrested in October 1997 a public debate ensued that centred on two closely related issues: whether he was acting alone or as part of a wider conspiracy; and whether his alleged actions were politically motivated. The question of individual 'authorship', of both the bombs and the letters, dominated discussion after Fuchs's arrest, and assumed political overtones. As the police investigation had yielded no specific evidence of a network of underground terrorists, the police publicly promoted the theory of the individual bomber. 'Only the public wants an accomplice', said Michael Sika, the law-enforcement official in charge of public security. The principal unanswered questions centred on the fact that police were able to find neither the 'workshop' and ingredients used to build the bombs nor the literary resources believed to be required to write the 'historical passages' in the letters that accompanied them.
Throughout the investigation contradictory reports as to the culprit's psychological profile were leaked. At the same time, speculation about the bomber's political motives ranged from Haider's claim that the Serbian secret service or the extreme left might be involved, to the claim that there existed a definite link between the FPÖ's xenophobic rhetoric and the formulations in the BBA letters. Given the explicitly racist content of the letters, the police investigated the neo-Nazi milieu but, after the embarrassing acquittal of Peter Binder and Franz Radl of complicity in the letter-bombs (see Parties, organizations, movements and Legal matters), they abandoned the theory that Fuchs was a neo-Nazi activist. Sika, however, supported by the tabloid daily Neue Kronenzeitung, attempted to 'depoliticize' the terrorist acts entirely, and Hans Dichand, publisher of Neue Kronenzeitung, criticized unnamed members of a 'hunting party' who 'wanted to fool the public into believing that an army of right-wing radicals was standing by'. Sika's view was described by Herbert Lackner, the editor of the news weekly Profil, as an attempt 'to convert the most serious political crime in post-war [Austrian] history into a boring everyday psychological thriller', and certainly contributed to the trivialization of the clearly racist motivation of the bombings.
Immigration and refugees
In March 1997 changes in legislation on asylum, residence permits and work permits were adopted, and described by the government as an 'integration package'. The residency law (Aufenhaltsgesetz) was incorporated into a revised 'alien law' (Fremdemgesetz) and included amended provisions such as: the ability to grant permanent residency to foreign residents after eight years; the lifting of the ban on permanent residency for the second generation of family members; the extending of the investigative powers of the police in tracking down illegal aliens. Among the changes to the asylum law was the provision that no applications for political asylum could be made from a 'safe third country' and that what constitutes a 'safe third country' would be decided at ministerial level (and not by asylum authorities).
Subsequently, in September 1998, the BMI proposed the creation of 'temporary protected status' for persons fleeing civil war and ethnic conflicts. Human rights groups and opposition politicians criticized the measure, arguing that it was aimed at abolishing the legal right to asylum.
Furthermore, in November 1998, the government proposed that all neighbouring and all European Union states should be considered 'safe third countries'. The adoption of the proposal would mean that any refugee arriving in Austria by land would not be eligible for asylum, and that only those who travelled by air could be considered.
In the first ten months of 1998, 10,720 applications for asylum were lodged, representing a significant increase on all previous years since 1993 when the lowest figure of the decade (4,743) was recorded. Simultaneously the number of applications granted has been decreasing, falling from 72 per cent in 1980 and 19 per cent in 1989 to 8.1 per cent in 1997.
Controversy erupted in May 1999 after Marcus Omafuma, a twenty-five-year-old Nigerian, died while being deported from Austria. Omafuma had been bound and gagged (with tape) before being forced aboard a plan bound for Bulgaria, and was pronounced dead on arrival in Sofia. The Bulgarian authorities detained the three Austrian detectives escorting the victim and ordered an immediate autopsy. Omafuma arrived in Austria in September 1998 seeking asylum, which was refused in December when his deportation to Nigeria was ordered. The Austrian interior ministry expressed its regret over Omafuma's death - explaining that the restraining measures had been used to counter the deportee's 'lasting and heavy resistance' - and ordered both an investigation and a temporary halt to deportations. The interior minister Karl Schlögl faced calls for his resignation and for the suspension of the detectives involved. European and Austrian human rights groups said the tragedy, the worst to occur in Austria, was the latest of a growing number caused by the policies of 'Fortress Europe'.
In April 1999 the UN High Commissioner for Refugees set up a relief plan for housing the hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanian refugees fleeing the war in Kosovo. Austria committed itself to receiving 5,000 refugees, and by the end of April a total of 811 had been taken in.
Mainstream political life
All five parties represented in the Austrian parliament (see General background) officially oppose discrimination against Jews and national or ethnic minorities, and all condemn acts of political violence. And while the enormous influence of the sometimes offensive mass-circulation tabloid Neue Kronenzeitung makes most mainstream politicians hesitate before criticizing its editorial line too explicitly, blatant expressions of anti-Jewish prejudice usually elicit public admonition and, if deemed serious enough, sometimes have political consequences.
Thus it is rare for national leaders of any of the parliamentary parties openly to express hostile attitudes towards Jews. On the contrary, part of the legacy of the 'Waldheim affair' to Austrian political culture is that political elites have become keenly aware of the potential damage such expressions might cause. Moreover, the pronouncements of national leaders on questions such as the historical responsibility of Austrians for the Holocaust, the commemoration of its victims and the need to combat antisemitism have continued the former chancellor Franz Vranitzky's much-acclaimed inauguration in 1992 of policies based on an acceptance of Austria's historical responsibility for crimes against the Jews. Yet, while there is no doubt as to the broadly 'philosemitic' inflection given to contemporary political discourse about Jews and things Jewish, the 'hard cases' such as the Wehrmacht exhibition (see Legacy of the Second World War) or the issue of looted Jewish property point to ambivalence in the carefully cultivated pronouncements of many politicians.
If the mainstream parties and politicians, with few exceptions, still abide by the taboo on openly anti-Jewish statements, restraint is sometimes less noticeable among individual members of these parties, particularly regarding expressions of ethnic prejudice against other minorities. (Notable exceptions here are the Greens and LiF who have unimpeachable records in this regard.) Such utterances do not always elicit the same kind of public condemnation as antisemitic ones. Indeed, in the case of the FPÖ under Jörg Haider, anti-foreigner sentiments have met with well-documented success - a success that has contributed to the inability of the far right to make electoral headway with its racist and xenophobic propaganda (see below).
The mayor of the city of Wels, Karl Bregartner (SPÖ), who resisted attempts to change the name of a city street named after the Nazi priest Otto Kernstock (see Legacy of the Second World War), signed a nine-point agreement with the national SPÖ leadership, point 7 of which states that 'public facilities of the city of Wels are to cancel all business associations with people suspected of far-right activities'. In December 1997, however, the local branch of SJ disclosed that Bregartner had renewed a contract for a booth at the Wels industrial fair with Ludwig Reinthaler. Reinthaler, who has never been convicted of neo-Nazi activity but whom the influential 1993 Handbuch des österreichischen Rechtsextremismus (Handbook of the Austrian Far Right), published by DÖW, described as a 'well-known right-wing radical', has in the past distributed leaflets against Roma, and in September 1996 sent a rope to Wolfgang Neugebauer, the director of DÖW, suggesting that he hang himself. To SJ activists, Bregartner's behaviour violated the nine-point agreement. Bregartner, who serves as president of the Wels trade fair, responded that the contract would probably be renewed, on the grounds that 'Reinthaler had never been convicted [of neo-Nazi activity]'.
In April 1998 Die Gemeinde (the magazine of the Viennese Jewish community) reported that the city of Wels had a longstanding contract with VTH Turnhalle Wels VerwaltungsGmbH & CoKEG for the use of sports facilities - an ice-skating rink, a beach volleyball ground and a basketball court - which were being run by the ÖTB (see Legacy of the Second World War and below). The city has reportedly paid AS8 million (c. US$600,000) for the ÖTB's use of the facilities.
The FPÖ's frequent demagogic appeals to ethnic prejudice and exploitation of the 'foreigner' issue in its electoral propaganda (sometimes containing racist overtones), together with the highly restrictive immigration policies pursued by the government, all seem to have reduced the political 'space' for non-terrorist far-right organizations (see below).
From the party's use of the slogan 'Wien darf nicht Chicago werden' (Vienna must not become Chicago) in successive municipal election campaigns, to Haider's 'Austria first' initiative petition (1992-3), to his promise to use the negotiations on the 'eastern' enlargement of the European Union (EU) - which he calls a 'declaration of war' on Austria - to focus on immigration, Haider's FPÖ skilfully channels the fears and uncertainty many Austrians feel about their future into xenophobic sentiments. Indeed, a Eurobarometer poll conducted in March 1998, on the eve of EU membership negotiations with five East European countries and Cyprus, showed that a majority of Austrians opposed membership for all of the countries concerned except Hungary, despite both the coalition government's support for enlargement and all the well-publicized indications that Austria was benefitting handsomely from the opening of eastern borders since 1989. In February 1999 the FPÖ called for the deportation of foreigners, including refugees, who remained unemployed for three months in order to 'relieve the pressure on the domestic job market'.
Haider's attempts of recent years to build a more respectable image and appeal to a wider range of voters by dumping important planks of the FPÖ programme - in particular the party's militant secularism as well as talismanic references to the Volksgemeinschaft (ethnic German community) - have caused dissension among his ideologically less adaptable supporters. Should Haider's 'turn' towards Catholic voters engender moderation of the FPÖ's more inflammatory anti-foreigner discourse, and this be perceived by his more militant supporters as too accommodating or even a betrayal, one might expect the potential for growth of the far right to increase.
1998 proved a difficult year for Haider. In the early months he twice threatened to quit as party leader: once in January when he accused party members of a lack of enthusiasm ('The party has a long way to go, and I cannot have the horse starting to limp at the first sign of an uphill slope'), and again in April in response to party infighting. Indeed, internal differences led that month to his sacking all the elected FPÖ officials in Salzburg (he was forced to reinstate them when the rank-and-file membership rebelled) and subsequently to the resignation of Haider's principal internal critics.
In February 1998 the British anti-fascist magagzine Searchlight reported that new evidence from police files shows that Rene Schimanek, FPÖ MP Walter Meischberger's assistant since December 1997, had at one time been actively involved with a neo-Nazi group. After the disclosure Meischberger described his aide as a talented 'young liberal', and Schimanek explained his past activities by saying that he had been politically naive at the time. The evidence, including legal depositions and photographs, reveals Schimanek taking full part in the activities of the Kameradschaft Langenlois, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group founded in 1986 by Rene's brother Hans-Jörg Schimanek, Jr. In the early 1990s Kameradschaft merged with the Volkstreue außerparlamentarische Opposition (VAPO, Ethnically Loyal Extra-Parliamentary Opposition, see below), and Hans-Jörg became a leading light in that party. Both are the sons of Hans-Jörg Schimanek, Sr, a leading FPÖ politician (for the younger Hans-Jörg's imprisonment, see Legal matters).
A far more damaging scandal erupted in May 1998, however, when FPÖ MP Peter Rosenstingl fled the country following charges that he had embezzled US$16 million. In an attempt to reduce the damage to the party's image, Haider fired the provincial party chairman for Lower Austria, Bernhard Gratzer (who was arrested on embezzlement charges weeks later), and forced two other FPÖ MPs implicated in the scandal to give up their parliamentary seats. Rosenstingl was captured in early June in Brazil, and an order for his extradition was granted by the Brazilian high court in March 1999.
Controversy erupted again in September 1998 when Haider was interviewed on a ZiB-2 television programme. On the subject of restitution to victims of the Nazi regime, Haider said: 'If Jewish emigrants [sic] are granted their demands, there will be no end to this so-called reparation. When Sudeten-Germans make the same demands to the Czech authorities, they are told it's not possible because the line must be drawn somewhere. But what's fair for one should be fair for all.' He went on to express his opposition to the setting up of a commission of historians to investigate Nazi crimes against Austrian Jews (see Legacy of the Second World War). Jewish organizations, Austrian politicans and Chancellor Klima condemned Haider's statement as making an outrageous comparison between the Holocaust and the post-war expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia.
In March 1999, in state elections in the traditional FPÖ stronghold of the southern state of Carinthia, the party scored its biggest electoral success to date, largely at the expense of the SPÖ. It took 42 per cent of the vote (compared to 33 per cent in the previous election), making it the largest party in the state parliament. In April - the ÖVP and SPÖ having decided not to try to block it by uniting in an 'alliance of losers' - Haider was duly selected by the state parliament as the Carinthian governor, a position from which he was forced to resign in 1991 after praising Hitler's employment policies. Haider told the state parliament that the FPÖ's success represented a rupture in the bipartisan political system, and that he hoped his party 'would not be in opposition forever'; he also gave assurances that he would remain as governor for the five-year term, and that he would not be standing in the general elections in October 1999. The FPÖ also improved its position in state elections in Tyrol (increasing its vote by 4 per cent) and Salzburg (taking 20 per cent of the vote) on the same day, giving Haider's party seats in all the state parliaments for the first time.
Haider was congratulated by, among others, Bruno Mégret and Jean-Marie Le Pen (see France) and Rolf Schlierer, leader of the Republikaner (see Germany). Mégret praised Haider's 'firmness, modernity, dynamism and solid base', and committed himself to bringing together 'Europe's nationalist right-wing forces'.
In the June 1999 European elections the FPÖ won 23.24 per cent of the vote, giving it five MEPs. While this represents a drop from the previous election, the party still emerged as the country's third largest.
Far-right parties
The only explicitly antisemitic parties and organizations in Austria are those on the far right, comprising not only small, militant political parties (often 'regional' divisions of German groups) but also more diffusely organized cultural, educational, religious and sporting associations, as well as certain veterans' groups and the relatively new skinhead movement. According to the 1998 BMI report on the far right in Austria (see Racism and xenophobia), the recent tendency has been away from hierarchically organized parties and towards cells of so-called 'leaderless resistance' (see USA) or even individuals acting alone, although widening use of the Internet has also created international networks of small or loosely organized groups. The report also notes an increased proclivity to xenophobic violence by young, generally unemployed and socially deprived males - organized more often in territorial gangs than around any commitment to ideology - evident throughout Austria in 1998. Amongst the dozens of far-right organizations that exist, many consist of no more than a mailing address, and memberships frequently overlap. The Austrian police estimate that hard-core neo-Nazis number approximately 300-500. According to the BMI Burgenland is the region most marked by far-right activity of all kinds, while other notable centres include Lower Austria, Upper Austria and Styria - where most of the activity takes place in the countryside - and Tyrol, where most of it occurs in Innsbruck, a university city with a large number of far-right youth groups.
Although it is important to identify the groups and individuals who view themselves explicitly as continuing, or reviving, the policies and ideology of the Third Reich, and who are prepared to use violence - and the danger which such potential political violence presents should not be dismissed - such groups have become increasingly marginalized even within the far-right milieu. Primarily as a result of their investigations into the 1993-6 letter-bombings (see Racism and xenophobia and Legal matters), the police seem to have acquired a firmer grip on such activities. In addition, a number of successful prosecutions over the past few years of individuals for neo-Nazi activity has to some extent deprived the movement of its leaders (see Legal matters).
The recent fate of what was in the late 1980s and early 1990s probably the most active and best known of all Austrian far-right groups, the VAPO, is emblematic of these developments. Founded in 1986 VAPO came to widespread public attention in 1992, after the arrest of its leader Gottfried Küssel, imprisoned for ten years (increased to eleven on appeal) in 1993 (see Legal matters). Subsequently, virtually the entire VAPO leadership and several activists have been imprisoned for periods ranging from eighteen months to fifteen years for neo-Nazi activity. In trials held in July and September 1997 ten VAPO activists were convicted and given suspended sentences.
Police and the prosecuting attorney's office believed that the first series of letter-bombs in 1993 had been sent in retaliation for the harsh sentence Küssel had received. Indeed, VAPO activists Peter Binder and Franz Radl were tried in connection with the letter-bombs, but were acquitted due to lack of evidence (see Racism and xenophobia). However, the investigation into the letter-bombs and their possible connection to VAPO (largely without results) led to over 100 searches of homes of far-right activists, which in turn yielded more evidence on the organization, its membership and the objectives of the far right.
These investigations and prosecutions have resulted in the virtual disappearance of VAPO as an organization, and have also had a dampening effect on the entire far-right milieu. Indeed, the activities of those still committed to far-right politics have recently centred around support groups for imprisoned comrades. And, in August 1998, one of the most active of these groups even folded, namely the Forum für ein humanes und demokratisches Strafrecht und zur Einhaltung der Menschenrechte (Forum for a Humane and Democratic Criminal Law and for Upholding Human Rights), headed by former FPÖ politician Ilse Hans (see also Legal matters). In a bizarre postscript to its history, at its last general meeting the group agreed to donate the remaining funds in its treasury to the DÖW, a donation that was, needless to say, refused.
The Arbeitsgemeinschaft für demokratische Politik (AFP, Political Action Committee for Democratic Politics, sometimes Aktionsgemeinschaft für demokratische Politik) is a registered political party, whose organ is the Kommentar zum Zeitgeschehen (Current Affairs Commentary, see Legal matters). The party's annual congress, the Politische Akademie (Political Academy), a meeting point for local and international far-rightists and neo-Nazis, was held in Offenhaus in October 1998 and attracted between 50 and 70 activists.
Those attending the congress voted unanimously to support the Verein Dichterstein Offenhausen (Offenhaus Poets' Association), a writers' circle which had attracted some thirty-five persons to a five-day meeting in Offenhaus in late April-early May 1998, following the initiation in early April of an investigation of the group by the district council of Wels. The organization's literary prize, named in honour of former Waffen-SS officer Robert Jan Verbelen, was awarded to Konrad Windisch (see Legal matters). The organization - for decades a forum for classical pan-German nationalism and the celebration of racist poets, and described by a journalist as 'the home-grown elite of the far right' - was finally closed down in December 1998.
The same law-enforcement efforts that have curtailed the activities of younger neo-Nazis have had a similar effect on the older generation. Gerd Honsik (see Publications and media and Spain), editor of the neo-Nazi Halt, remains a fugitive from Austrian justice in Spain, and thus unable to play any significant role in Austria, while many other older German and Austrian formations have either splintered into mutually hostile grouplets or retired to private life. The importance of groups such as the Kritische Demokraten (Critical Democrats), led by Horst Jakob Rosenkranz - editor of the xenophobic magazine Fakten - has declined significantly, and individuals like Herbert Fritz, a teacher and for many years editor of the far-right paper Der Völkerfreund (The People's Friend), told the news magazine Profil in April 1997 that 'the moderates are withdrawing [from active political involvement]. And [he] wasn't interested in illegal political activity.'
In theory, the new legislation adopted by the Austrian parliament authorizing the use of intrusive surveillance techniques (see Legal matters) ought to enable the police to keep more effective tabs on far-right activities. At the same time, the far right's increasing use of electronic telecommunications, including sophisticated encoding programmes, has made police work more difficult.
Furthermore, it remains unclear how effectively the organizations that have been dispersed have been able to regroup underground, and to what extent the various diffusely organized cultural, educational, veterans' and athletic organizations with a völkisch character have been used as legal fronts for the dispersed memberships and as potential vehicles for recruitment.
One such group is the Kameradschaft IV, a veterans' organization with a membership largely composed of former Waffen-SS members. It is regionally organized (including German divisions), publishes Die Kameradschaft, an 'independent journal of information for soldiers', and holds regular meetings to commemorate war-time events where far-right literature and Nazi memorabilia are on sale. Kameradschaft IV condemns the Wehrmacht exhibition (see Legacy of the Second World War).
Members of Kameradschaft IV form part of the group of some 3,000 war veterans - from Austria, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands - who annually meet on Ulrichsberg mountain near Klagenfurt (Carinthia), and did so again most recently on 4 October 1998. Other participating organizations include the Abwehrkämpfverband (Defending Fighters Group), Achterjägerverband (Eighty-Year-Old Group), Kameradschaft der ehemaligen Gebirgsjäger (Association of Former Mountain Troops) and the Österreichischer Soldatenverband (Austrian Soldiers Group). While a segment of the gathered assembly is composed of unrepentant former Nazis, neo-Nazis and others on the far right, the occasion is not only one for affirming ideological solidarity, but also one which speakers from various political parties, including mainstream parties, exploit as an opportunity for electioneering. It was at the 1995 meeting that Jörg Haider made the keynote speech that provoked a number of Austrian writers and intellectuals to initiate court proceedings against him for glorification of National Socialism, charges which the authorities did not pursue. The keynote speaker in 1998 was the leader of the ÖVP in Carinthia, Christof Zernatto.
The athletic organization ÖTB (see Legacy of the Second World War), with some 70,000 members, dozens of regional branches, publications - including the newsletter Bundesturnzeitung (National Gymnastics Newspaper) - and summer camps, is concerned with 'cultural education that instils an awareness of nationality'. To what extent it is successful in this aim is open to dispute - many members are there to enjoy organized sport - but it is one of the most active and 'respectable' of the groups whose leadership openly promotes a kind of völkisch pan-Germanic nationalism, and has been the recipient of indirect government subsidies (see above).
In September 1998 Die Gemeinde, the monthly magazine of the Viennese Jewish community, reported that the Partei Neue Ordnung (PNO, New Order Party) was facing proceedings in an Eisenstadt (Burgenland) court for offences under the NS-Verbotsgesetz, the law prohibiting support for National Socialism or Nazi objectives. A raid on the founder Robert Dürr's residence in Nickelsdorf in August 1998 yielded a large quantity of evidence. Dürr, a Burgenland farmer, former FPÖ functionary and one of the most active figures on the far-right scene outside the FPÖ, is known for several antisemitic statements over the years.
In November 1996 Dürr and fellow PNO-member Michael Gruber were charged with causing a disturbance at the Wehrmacht exhibition in Klagenfurt (Carinthia). In the final verdict in the case, handed down in December 1998 by a Klagenfurt court, both men were sentenced to four months' imprisonment (suspended for three years) and one of them was fined AS27,000 (c. US$2,000).
Dürr's PNO apparently joined forces with the neo-Nazi skinhead group Neuen Jugendoffensive (NJO, New Youth Offensive) to organize a two-day music festival, Fest der Völker (People's Festival), to be held in August 1998 on the anniversary of the death of Rudolf Hess, in Mönchshof (Burgenland) near Vienna. The festival claimed that some 2,000 German, Austrian and Hungarian skinheads would attend, and that the concert would feature the Austrian bands Schlachthaus (Slaughterhouse) and Ansgar, and the German band Sturmtrupp (Stormtroop). After plans for the festival were exposed in the media the concert was banned.
The most prominent of all Austrian skinhead groups is the Hammerskins, which is probably more organized (and less violent) than some of the numerous more ephemeral groupings. The group's aim is the growth of an international network of Hammerskin groups, all connected via the Internet. The Hammerskins' principal ideologue is Karl Polacek, who returned to his native Austria in 1992 after being convicted in Germany of a serious axe assault on an anti-fascist activist. Polacek is apparently the Austrian contact of the Swedish group Vitt arisk motstand (VAM, see Sweden), which is itself part of an internationally active network of neo-Nazis. In the first issue of his Austrian newsletter Braunauer Ausguck (Brown Sentinel), Polacek wrote: 'Of course we are interested in dialogue between Swedish and Austro-German nationalists. Our co-operation is necessary for the future.' Polacek is considered to be particularly dangerous because of his role as 'father-figure' to the whole Austrian skinhead movement, especially in Salzburg and Upper Austria. He is apparently appealing a January 1999 conviction in a Ried court (see Legal matters).
The BMI reports illegal activities by young skinheads throughout
Austria. Although the violence tends to be directed at foreigners most of the perpetrators
in 1998 were charged under the penal code (for assault or property damage) rather than
under the NS-Verbotsgesetz (see Legal matters). Amongst the cases highlighted in the BMI
report are the following: a skinhead group in Vienna-Auhof calling itself
Hietzinger-Glatzen (Hietzinger-Baldheads) was investigated for violations of the penal
code and the NS-Verbotsgesetz, and two of its members were detained by the juvenile court;
proceedings are pending in Vienna against a skinhead group known as Blood and Honour for
various infringements of the penal code (for the original Blood and Honour organization,
see UK); in July 1998 an official house-search of the organizer of a gathering in
Amstetten of around 200 skinheads, some from German groups, revealed Nazi propaganda and
contact addresses of members of organizations officially prohibited in Germany.
The BMI (see Racism and xenophobia) recorded 8 antisemitic crimes committed in Austria in 1998; four of the cases were solved by the end of the year. The total number of offences is just over half the number recorded in 1997 (17), the same as the number recorded in 1996 (8) and considerably lower than that recorded in 1995 (25).
Still at large is one-time FPÖ candidate Christian W. Anderle, the second suspect, believed to be the main assailant, involved in the 1992 desecration of the Eisenstadt cemetery in Burgenland. Wolfgang Tomsits, his co-defendant, was sentenced to four years' imprisonment in December 1996. Tomsits's sentence took account of his neo-Nazi activity, including the publication of the neo-Nazi pamphlet Albus. At the time of the desecration both men were officials of the FPÖ youth organization Ring freiheitlicher Jugend (RFJ, Circle of Libertarian Youth). The British anti-fascist magazine Searchlight (March 1998) published evidence that Anderle was being sheltered by neo-Nazis in Sweden 'well into 1997'.
On 20 April 1999, the anniversary of Hitler's birthday, a dozen Jewish gravestones in a Graz cemetery were sprayed with antisemitic slogans and Nazi symbols by an unknown perpetrator.
In July 1998 the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the DÖW issued a joint statement criticizing the decision by Vienna prosecutors not to prosecute the retired theology professor Robert Prantner on charges of having violated laws against incitement to racial hatred. Prantner last taught Christian ethics and society at the Catholic college in Heiligenkreuz (Lower Austria). He is also a former director of studies of the political academy of the ÖVP, and was accredited as a diplomatic representative of the embassy of the Sovereign Order of Maltese Knights in Austria. The subject of the charge was Prantner's December 1997 article entitled 'Tightrope walk on a one-way street?' published in Zur Zeit, a far-right weekly (see Publications and media). After noting the efforts of the Vatican to confront the legacy of Christian antisemitism, and endorsing the statement of an unnamed Belgian Dominican friar against 'antisemitism, racial hatred and crimes against humanity, which have long determined history and contributed to an atmosphere in which the Holocaust could have become possible', Prantner addressed what he perceived as the Jews' unwillingness to return the favour: 'In view of the even bloodier crimes of Jewish representatives (not "Jewry" itself) against Catholic Christians', Prantner wrote, he was disappointed that notable Jewish figures had not offered 'a word, a gesture, a sign of regret, of remorse, of apology'. In particular, Prantner evinced a tale of ritual murder: 'Crimes by Jewish people against Christians are also deplorable stories, against children, such as the holy martyred child Anderl von Rinn, as well as against adults in the period before Easter.' Only if and when 'a congress of world Jewry' asks for forgiveness for 'the blood of murdered Christians shed by Jewish hands' would he be able to congratulate recipients (such as Willy Brandt, Richard von Weizsäcker and Franz Vranitzky) of awards given by B'nai B'rith. In the meantime, he would pray for the 'child Anderl von Rinn martyred at "Judenstein", beatified by the Roman Catholic Church, to whom devout people have remained loyal'.
The blood-libel cult of Anderl von Rinn was established to commemorate the memory of a child, Andreas von Rinn, who, according to a seventeenth-century legend, was the victim of a Jewish ritual murder in 1462. Every 18 July, die-hard devotees of the cult visit the site at 'Judenstein' in Tyrol. In the early 1990s the then bishop of Innsbruck, Reinhold Stecher, spoke out forcefully against the cult, and in 1994 abolished it altogether, renaming the church in Judenstein Mariä Heimsuchung (the Visitation of Mary), and removing all references to the alleged ritual murder. The Vatican itself has since endorsed Stecher's ban on the cult. Following a celebration by the cult's followers at the site in July 1998, Stecher's successor as bishop of Innsbruck, Alois Kothgasser, stated that 'the Catholic Church repudiates every form of denunciation, allegation and insinuation against the Jewish people'.
One should not exaggerate the significance for the wider political culture of a marginal theologian writing in an obscure, if heavily advertised, right-wing paper. Moreover, not only have several prominent Catholic authorities protested against Prantner's article, the colloquium of professors of Catholic theology at the University of Vienna voted by a two-thirds majority to rescind Prantner's authorization to examine students in theology (though to what extent Prantner's defence of the blood libel played in this decision is unclear). Still, it does suggest that leading representatives of one important, if dissident, wing of the FPÖ, by providing space in the pages of Zur Zeit, see nothing untoward in providing a forum for the crudest of anti-Jewish lies.
More alarming is the response of Ewald Stadler, head of the FPÖ's parliamentary group, who made the case the subject of a parliamentary question in December 1997. He criticized the 'scandalous rescinding of examination authority' by Vienna's faculty, and stated that the charge of antisemitism against Prantner's article was 'a malicious insinuation'.
Gottfried Melzer, a sixty-six-year-old retired chaplain and a supporter of the Anderl von Rinn cult, commented on the affair in a late 1998 issue of his newsletter Anderl-Bote. He commended Stadler for his parliamentary questions on behalf of Prantner and described the attack on the theology professor as a violation of academic freedom. He described the DÖW and the Austrian Jewish community as the 'ringleaders of the campaign against Prantner', and accuses them of exerting influence in various quarters, including the Vatican secretariat and the chancellor of the Sovereign Order of Maltese Knights, who at one point considered expelling Prantner from its diplomatic service but decided in the end to issue a ban on him making statements on the 'Jewish question'. In the newsletter Melzer thanked Maximilian Baumgartner for providing 'important material' for his article, and noted that Prantner had been a speaker at a January 1998 meeting of Baumgartner's Peoples' Movement for Moral and Social Renewal, an organization (banned until 1982) dedicated to the rescue of 'our people, our children and our western Christian culture from moral collapse and cultural dilution by undogly and racially destructive forces'. In the past, Baumgartner has written that 'the Zionists and their allies are responsible for a wave of anti-German propaganda, using atrocity lies of the most despicable kind'. In March 1999 Melzer was convicted by the court in Steyr (Upper Austria) of incitement to racial hatred, and given a six months' suspended sentence.
In May 1999 the Polish Catholic radio station Radio Maryja - which frequently makes use of antisemitic stereotypes in its programmes (see Poland) - expanded its Austrian base. The station is now broadcasting from several locations in Tyrol, in addition to its first base in Amstetten. A church spokesman for the Innsbruck diocese, Ernst Jäger, apparently said that the local church was adopting an attitude of 'critical benevolence' towards Radio Maryja.
Both the concern for their editorial reputations and the public taboo on the subject preclude the appearance in mainstream Austrian newspapers and magazines of primitive anti-Jewish propaganda. This does not prevent more subtle forms of prejudice from appearing in these papers or in less mainstream papers whose editorial line lies between conservative and far-right.
Zur Zeit is a weekly paper founded and edited by Andreas Mölzer, former director of the FPÖ's political academy. Mölzer is perhaps most (in)famous for having warned Austrians against the dangers of 'ethnic transformation' (Umvolkung) several years ago. He and others from the more orthodox pan-German nationalist wing of the FPÖ have been critical of Haider's most recent programmatic opportunism (see Parties, organizations, movements). Zur Zeit was founded in part to provide a forum for the more intellectually-minded of such disgruntled elements, and its editorial line can best be described as a middle- to high-brow version of the politics Haider represented between 1986, when he became head of the FPÖ, and roughly the end of 1996, when he inaugurated the explicit political 'turn'. As such, Zur Zeit has been among the most hostile opponents of the Wehrmacht exhibition (see Legacy of the Second World War) and frequently opens its pages to authors of far-right views as well as to those who propagate old-fashioned Christian antisemitism (see Religious antisemitism).
Zur Zeit's predecessor as the central press organ of the 'thinking' far right was Aula, Das freiheitliche Magazin (Aula, the Libertarian Magazine), founded in 1951. Aula was dealt the first of two almost fatal blows in March 1995, when its offices were searched by the authorities in connection with the murderous letter-bombing in Oberwart (see Legal matters) and its subscription list was confiscated. Five months later, the magazine's editor Herwig Nachtmann, was found guilty by a Graz court under the NS-Verbotsgesetz for a mid-1994 article, 'Naturgesetze gelten für Nazis und Antifaschisten' (Natural laws are valid for both Nazis and anti-fascists), which was deemed to have denied the Holocaust (see Legal matters). Aula lost the financial support of both the FPÖ, the Styrian state government and several advertisers.
The March 1998 issue of Aula included a fundraising insert issued by the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Publizistik (Society for the Advancement of Journalism), an organization which had been dissolved under trade union law following an August 1997 investigation.
Among the books published under the Aula imprint is a recent collection of theoretical essays entitled 1848 - Erbe und Auftrag (1848 - Heritage and Mission), edited by Otto Scrinzi and Jürgen Schwab. (Scrinzi, a former SA Stormtrooper and member of the Nazi Party, is now a leading FPÖ member, and the German Schwab was cited in a 1997 report of the internal security service in the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen.) In the book Schwab attacks the 'present-day democratic dictatorship of public opinion' and the 'manifold democratic control of communications'; he also denounces the Austrian laws banning national socialism - particularly the outlawing of propaganda for a Greater Germany or the unification of Austria and Germany - as well as organizations that promote such 'restrictions', like the German and Austrian security services and anti-fascist institutes like the DÖW. The collection also includes an essay entitled 'Freiheit und Wahrheit' (Freedom and Truth) by one of Austria's foremost Roman Catholic theologians, the Vatican-based Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Gerd Honsik, a fugitive from Austrian justice in Spain (see Parties, organizations, movements), continues to disseminate his neo-Nazi publication Halt in the German-speaking world. At least five 1998 issues of the journal were identified by the authorities. Honsik was also held to be responsible for the December 1998 appearance in far-right circles of a book entitled Von Deutschlands Kampf und Fall (On Germany's Struggle and Fall). The book, illegal in Austria, attempts to rehabilitate National Socialism as an ideology, and glorifies the Wehrmacht.
A 'circle' devoted to the work of German occultist and New Age author Jan van Helsing (the pseudonym of Udo Holey) has been formed in Vienna. The Vienna state authorities have launched an investigation into van Helsing's work, which is an amalgamation of far-right revisionism, conspiracy theories and occult ideology. His bestseller, Geheimgesellschaften und ihre Macht im 20. Jahrhundert (Secret Societies and Their Power in the Twentieth Century), has already been banned in Germany and Switzerland for incitement to racial hatred. In the book van Helsing claims that world events are determined by a secret supranational council composed of politicians and 'Jewish bankers' whose aim is world domination, and suggests that Germany should not be criticized for trying 'to rid itself of its Jews'.
Use of the Internet, e-mail and computer bulletin boards continues to enable neo-Nazis to establish an ever-growing international network. This network remains relatively inaccessible to law-enforcement agencies in Austria, although new legislation allowing the extended use of investigative tools may change this (see Legal matters).
In February 1996 Kurt Peter Weiß and computer expert Franz Swoboda set up the Bürgerforum Österreich (Austrian Citizen's Forum) web-site on the Internet which offered antisemitic propaganda and Holocaust-denial material. The web-site also enabled visitors to contact other prominent Holocaust-deniers, both organizations and individuals, such as the Institute for Historical Review and Ernst Zundel (see USA and Canada, respectively). Weiß has a long history of far-right activism, and was at the time an FPÖ MP. The DÖW reported this activity to the police in February 1997 (see Legal matters). Although the web-site was closed down by its Austrian server (Vianet) when details of its contents were made known to the company, it is still accessible through US servers.
Various far-right activities are punishable under Austrian criminal law. Open support of National Socialism and advocacy of Nazi objectives are prohibited by legislation dating from 1945, the so-called 'prohibition law' (NS-Verbotsgesetz). Amendments to the law approved in February 1992 widened the scope of prohibited activity to include denial of the Holocaust and 'crude trivialization' of Nazi genocide. At the same time, the Austrian parliament reduced the minimum sentence from five years to one, reasoning that the lighter the minimum sentence the greater the likelihood of successful prosecutions. Statistics provided by the BMI seem to bear this out (see Racism and xenophobia). From 1984 to 1990, for example, 676 total prosecutions under the NS-Verbotsgesetz led to only eight convictions. Since the amendments in 1992, however, there have been over sixty convictions (some are still pending on appeal). Nonetheless, the long-term educational value, and the civil liberties issues involved in making denial of the Holocaust a criminal offence, remain a matter of controversy.
In addition, the Austrian criminal code penalizes incitement to commit acts of persecution or discrimination against an individual on the basis of his or her race, religion or national origin. The same law prohibits a person from ridiculing members of one of the aforementioned groups in a contemptuous fashion, or from insulting them in a manner that offends their human dignity. In the past, the law against incitement has been invoked to protect Jews and other minorities against physical attacks, and the latter provisions against crude forms of antisemitic material. However, the wording has proved to be vague and malleable in the courtroom.
The law on the formation of associations (Vereine) states that permission to form an organization may be denied if it is apparent that it will pursue the illegal activities of a prohibited organization (e.g. neo-Nazi activities).
Legislation was passed in October 1997 to provide law-enforcement agencies with expanded investigative tools, such as electronic eavesdropping, merging of databases and witness protection programmes. This law will have a direct effect on investigations into far-right activities, particularly in cases involving the Internet.
By far the most important recent legal proceeding was the five-week trial in February-March 1999 of Franz Fuchs, a self-confessed member (possibly the only one) of the Bajuwarische Befreiungsarmee (BBA, Bavarian Liberation Army) charged with carrying out the murderous bombing campaign that took place between 1993 and 1996 (see also Racism and xenophobia). The jury found Fuchs guilty of multiple counts of murder and attempted murder, and the Graz court sentenced him to life imprisonment, to be served in an institution for mentally abnormal offenders. While the defence argued that he had accomplices, the court found that he had acted alone. Fuchs had been excluded from most of the trial after constantly shouting racist abuse in the courtroom. He was led out of the court for the last time, having been brought back for the final summing up, shouting 'Long live ethnic Germans' and 'Long live the BBA'.
Fuchs was arrested in October 1997 when police in the Styrian community of Gralla stopped him in an unrelated matter. When the officers approached his car, Fuchs detonated a bomb he was holding, blowing off his own hands and injuring both arresting officers. Searches of Fuchs's apartment yielded much important evidence apparently linking him to several of the bombings and to the BBA. In January 1998 Fuchs implicated himself in the bombing campaign during police interrogation, having already confessed to membership of the BBA and having provided technical information on bomb construction.
In the cases against Franz Swoboda and Peter Kurt Weiß, charged with two counts of violating the NS-Verbotsgesetz on their Internet web-site (see Publications and media), the DÖW's original complaints were filed against Franz Swoboda in February 1997 (in Vienna) and against Peter Kurt Weiß in July 1997 (in Salzburg). In Vienna the prosecuting attorney's office decided that use of the Internet did not violate the provision in the NS-Verbotsgesetz against public dissemination of neo-Nazi material. In response, however, Justice Minister Nikolaus Michalek announced in May 1997 that his office would pursue the investigation of Swoboda with a view to prosecution. In the meantime Michalek's ministry has issued its own guidelines on prosecuting, and otherwise combatting, propaganda on the Internet. The case against Weiß by the Salzburg district court is ongoing. In the meantime both men remain active.
Two of the main VAPO leaders, Gottfried Küssel and Hans-Jörg Schimanek, Jr, sentenced to eleven and eight years respectively, must both serve many years before they come up for parole (unless their sentences are further reduced). Küssel was originally sentenced to ten years, raised on appeal to eleven (see Parties, organizations, movements); Schimanek, Jr was originally sentenced to fifteen years, reduced on appeal to eight. Since his son's conviction in March 1995 Hans-Jörg Schimanek, Sr (an FPÖ member of the Lower Austrian state parliament) has been campaigning to have the case re-opened and/or the sentence reduced (for his other son Rene, see Parties, organizations, movements). Moreover Schimanek, Jr's cause has at various times been adopted by the now-defunct Forum for a Humane and Democratic Criminal Law and for Upholding Human Rights (see Parties, organizations, movements), and by the head of the FPÖ's parliamentary group, Ewald Stadler, who intervened with Justice Minister Nikolaus Michalek in June 1997, claiming that two of the jurors in Schimanek, Jr's trial were biased because of alleged links with the Roma and Sinti community (particularly in the Burgenland village of Oberwart). Stadler argued that, for this reason, 'the trial by the media, and . . . the constantly repeated apparent connection between the defendant and the Oberwart bombing, it is not surprising that a fifteen-year sentence was handed down'. The justice ministry currently has no plans to re-open the case.
In November 1998 Gottfried Küssel's wife Karin, also a VAPO member, came before the court for violating the NS-Verbotsgesetz.
Proceedings against members of the völkisch Burschenschaft Olympia came to an end in 1998 when they were all acquitted by a Vienna district court. The defendants were charged after clashing with members of an anti-racist group at a December 1997 celebration of the founding of the Burschenschaft Olympia.
In July 1998 Konrad Windisch, chief editor of the AFP's Kommentare zum Zeitgeschehen (Current Affairs Commentary, see Parties, organizations, movements), had his appeal against a 1996 conviction referred back by the high court; in October a Vienna court upheld the original verdict. Windisch had been found guilty in October 1996 of violating the NS-Verbotsgesetz and given a one year's suspended sentence: several articles in Kommentare had been deemed to exhibit an 'uncritical acceptance of National Socialism'. Windisch was awarded the literary prize of the Dichterstein Offenhausen in the spring of 1998 (see Parties, organizations, movements).
Waiting for trial is Fritz Rebhandl who was charged under the NS-Verbotsgesetz in July 1998 by a Ried court for his role as editor of the far-right journal Der Volkstreue (Journal of the Ethnically Loyal) which is deemed to have published articles denying the Holocaust. Rebhandl was already convicted in 1992 under the NS-Verbotsgesetz.
In September 1998 Herwig Nachtmann, editor of the far-right magazine Aula, appealed his 1995 conviction for violation of the NS-Verbotsgesetz to the European Human Rights Commission (see Publications and media). In August 1995 he was first found guilty by a Graz court, fined AS240,000 (c. US$18,000) and given a ten months' suspended sentence. The verdict was upheld on appeal in May 1996, although the fine was reduced to AS192,000 (c. US$14,500) and the suspended sentence to eight months. In his case before the European Commission Nachtmann claimed that his right to freedom of expression had been restricted. The Commission found that the restriction was one that was necessary in a democratic society.
Amongst the 1998 cases involving young skinheads were highlighted in the BMI report on far-right activities. Twenty-four skinheads, one a minor, were prosecuted under the NS-Verbotsgesetz in central Vienna for attempting to stop a Youth against Racism in Europe demonstration; the leader of the group - found living alone in his dead parents' flat with three handguns - was represented during the proceedings by a social worker. In the Melk area of Lower Austria members of a skinhead group were found guilty of grievous bodily harm and property damage, and sentenced to prison terms. In the Leoben region of Styria twenty-one skinheads were charged under both the penal code and the NS-Verbotsgesetz for assault and vandalism. In Kapfenberg (Styria), two juvenile females were arrested for daubing national-socialist graffiti and spreading xenophobic propaganda.
In January 1999 Karl Polacek (see Parties, organizations, movements) was convicted by a court in Ried under the NS-Verbotsgesetz and sentenced to two years in prison, eighteen months of which was suspended. (The sentence is under appeal.) The investigation of his activities in Austria took so many years that Green party politicians tabled parliamentary questions accusing the prosecutor Heinrich Steinsky of delaying tactics. Steinsky is a member of Suevia, one of the student fraternities (Burschenschaften) with a völkisch character. According to the Austrian magazine News Polacek even attended one of Steinsky's lectures in June 1998.
Haider has kept Austrian courts busy over the past few years. For the most part, it is Haider who brings suit against public figures who make disparaging references to his right-wing politics or attempt to link him to the neo-Nazi right. Occasionally, he has won libel judgements. Even more frequently, however, the courts have found against him, ruling that his detractors are properly exercising their right to free speech.
The 1996 case against Haider for defaming the minister for science and transport, Caspar Einem, has still not been settled, but his defeat seems likely. Haider had accused Einem of having spent time in Zwettl prison for a drug offence, though at the time Einem was to have been incarcerated the prison was no longer in operation. If found guilty Haider could face up to one year in prison, although a fine is more likely. Members of parliament are usually guaranteed immunity from prosecution, but a special parliamentary committee revoked Haider's immunity.
Closely related to the dispute about the memorial to Jewish victims of National Socialism (see Legacy of the Second World War) is one about a plaque to be placed on Judenplatz at the initiative of the Catholic Church. There is already a plaque near that square which contains an inscription, for those who read Latin, that alludes to the forced baptism, forced suicide or murder of 200 Viennese Jews in 1421. In 1997 Leon Zelman persuaded Vienna's archbishop Christoph Schönborn to mount a second plaque, this time in German, which would more clearly describe the events in 1421 and explicitly attribute responsibility (i.e. to the Catholic priests who reputedly harangued the crowds, and more generally to historical Christian anti-Judaism). Schönborn responded favourably to the idea, but the text he originally proposed was considered by many to be too vague, if not misleading. Most critics objected to a passage stating that during the 'period of [their] persecution in 1420/21, Jews of Vienna committed suicide in the synagogue here on Judenplatz, in order to avoid a feared forcible baptism. Others, approximately 200, were burned alive on a pyre in Erdberg. Motivated by superstitious hostile attitudes towards Jews, the Christians of Vienna accepted this without resistance, even justified it.' In view of the strong opposition to the initial text, Schönborn has agreed to revise it, but a new text has not yet been published.
In March 1999 students at a Viennese secondary school initiated a campaign to put up a memorial plaque in the school in the memory of all the Jewish students who had attended the school and later perished in the Holocaust. The students had been involved in a research project in which the Jewish students were traced.
In the same month an information leaflet on racism, prepared by the political education department of the ministry of education and cultural affairs, was issued for use in Austrian schools.
An international conference, entitled 'The presence of the absence', will provide a forum for dialogue between eyewitnesses and the descendants of both victims and perpetrators of the Holocaust. The conference, organized by 'second generation' groups in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom as well as other anti-racist groups, will take place at the University of Vienna from 1-3 September 1999. The two principal themes for the conference will be Austria's role in the Holocaust, including its unwillingness to confront the past, and the transmission of memory in the family and society generally.
Institute for Jewish Policy Research
© JPR 1999
