The Language of Joseph Goebbels
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer
Survivors of the concentration camp Ebensee were shot at and abused as they gathered to remember their liberation on May 10th. Masked neo-Nazi thugs screamed ‘Heil Hitler!’ and ‘This way for the gas!’ at ten elderly Italian men and women, who returned to the site of the concentration camp in Austria. The gang also fired air guns at a group of 15 French survivors, many dressed in the striped pyjama-style uniforms they wore as inmates. One suffered a head wound while another was injured by a shot in the neck. Some of the young neo-Nazi perpetrators are now in custody awaiting trial.
The immediate reaction in Austria was to downplay the incident as a mere “provocation” and some of the leaders of FPÖ are already worried that the youngsters could be punished “disproportionately”.
This was just one of the incidents which have been reported this month. Here is another.
Some pupils of a Viennese grammar school who were on a trip to Auschwitz had to be sent back because of their antisemitic remarks and what is worse, the teachers conducting the group remained silent.
Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger expressed his shock over the incident during the commemorations in Ebensee, and said:
“Such provocations are unbearable and must not be tolerated. I unreservedly condemn this”.
The foreign minister, who was at the time in New York was of course worried about the “damage [to] Austria’s international reputation” that “cast a shadow on Austria as a tourist destination.”
The reactions to such aggressions and antisemitic incitement are usually very low key in Austria. However the conservative Vienna daily “Die Presse”, which belongs to a company owned by the Catholic Church does not this general attitude. On Sunday May 17, it published an interview with Dr. Ariel Muzicant, President of the Jewish community in Austria. According to Ariel Muzicant in Austria rightwing extremism is advancing and the leadership of Austrian Freedom party (FPÖ) is preparing “systematically” the ground for it.
“Even under Jörg Haider there was not such a gathering of extreme right wing functionaries as today under Heinz-Christian Strache, Graf and Mölzer. They encourage the right wing extremism in their own ranks and want to make it systematically socially acceptable.”
In his interview Muzicant deplored the election of Martin Graf as the third president of Austrian parliament:
“That the whole [conservative) ÖVP and parts of the (social-democratic) SPÖ voted for Mr. Graf was one of those breaches in a dyke, for which we now get the bill.”
Muzicant believes that without this election the incident would not have happened in Ebensee.
“In Austria there is no danger of left wing extremism, I see the danger from right”.
Muzicant is in agreement with Michael Häupl social-democratic mayor of Vienna, who compared the methods of the FPÖ with the methods used by the Nazis.
“When I hear Mr.[Herbert] Kickl (secretary general of FPÖ) this reminds me of the incitement and the language of Joseph Goebbels.”
Today (Monday, May 18, 09) Der Standard the left-liberal Vienna daily published an interview with Werner Faymann, social-democratic chancellor of Austria. Faymann who until today didn’t react to the recent antisemitic incidents. In his interview he accuses HC Strache, leader of the FPÖ of being a “hate-preacher”. His angry reaction came in wake of a whole page ad of HC Strache und A. Mölzer in the Vienna daily “Neue Kronenzeitung” which is campaiginng taking a stand against not just Turkey, but also Israel, joining the European Union.
As Faymann points out:
“To name Israel is absolutely absurd. Israel is not at all a candidate to join. There is not even a procedure for joining. The only cause to name Israel is to satisfy antisemitic prejudices. That is a shame. […] I deplore this instigation sharply.”
Better late than never.
Comments
| 19 May 2009, 9:08 am |
Is this a guest post by the great Karl Pfeifer?
| 19 May 2009, 9:24 am |
Good piece by Garrard over at normblog on the new antisemitism and how to fight it.
| 19 May 2009, 10:37 am |
‘No Jews’ policy employed at Austria hotel
A hotel in the Austrian region of Tyrol that said it does not accept Jewish guests has caused shock in the local media and tourism industry, the daily Tiroler Tageszeitung reported Sunday.
A Vienna family of seven had had tried to make a reservation at the Haus Sonnenhof apartment hotel in the village of Serfaus, but the owner replied by e-mail that although the room was free, she did not want to take in Jewish guests because of “bad experiences” in the past.
The region around Serfaus has become popular among orthodox Jewish tourists in recent years, and several hotels in Tyrol have begun offering kosher food.
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At Hotel Alpenruh-Micheluzzi, owner Petra Micheluzzi told the German Press Agency DPA that the rejection by the Sonnenhof was “bad for the image” of Serfaus.
One such incident could destroy all the hard work by others in the travel industry, she said, a view echoed by local and regional tourism officials.
“That’s terrible,” said Esther Fritsch, the president of the regional Jewish community. So far there have been no such incidents, she told the newspaper.
Irmgard Monz, the owner of the Haus Sonnenhof apartment hotel, could not be reached for comment on Sunday. In an interview with Tiroler Tageszeitung, she offered no justification for her e-mail.
For his part, the rejected father of five has decided to spend the
summer elsewhere: “I don’t want to spend my vacation in such a racist
nest, and I will inform all my friends about what is going on in
Tyrol,” the unidentified man was quoted as saying.
| 19 May 2009, 10:50 am |
And the purpose of dragging a busful of Viennese grammar school pupils to Auschwitz was what exactly?
To elicit ritualized masochistic breast-beating about something which happened their parents were born?
Whose vile idea was this anyway?
| 19 May 2009, 10:52 am |
While on the subject of Auschwitz, it is instructive to note that there is still a market for recovered dental gold.
| 19 May 2009, 11:25 am |
@Rockall666@
usually Austrian pupils are taken to the former concentration camp Mauthausen in Austria.
This visit to Auschwitz was not well organised by the teachers. Usually Nazis write about “ritualized masochistic breast-beating”, however this is part and parcel of Austrian history. Nazis of course object, because when you show young people what the Nazis did, they are usually not keen to follow in their steps.
| 19 May 2009, 11:32 am |
Masochists! Are they getting a fair crack of the whip?
Austria gave the world Sacher-Masoch’s ‘Venus in Furs,’ of course!
One outstanding example of Germanic masochism being the retention of the Slavic conquerors’ Cyrillic scrawls in the Bundestag, preserved as tenderly as texts in Linear B, rather than being recognised as visible evidence of the humiliation of the German people and briskly erased.
| 19 May 2009, 12:08 pm |
The greatest trick the Osterreichers played was to convince the world that Hitler was German and Beethoven Austrian.
| 19 May 2009, 1:54 pm |
Rockall666
Go away
| 19 May 2009, 4:49 pm |
“And the purpose of dragging a busful of Viennese grammar school pupils to Auschwitz was what exactly?”
To show what humanity is capable of if prejudice takes precedence.
This isn’t necessarily about those murdered by Hitler’s regime; it’s about the dangers that prejudice can create for ALL of us. Last time it was the Jews, the gypsies, the homosexuals and the mentally handicapped. Who might it be next time? These visits are designed to discourage a ‘next time’. Long may they continue.
| 19 May 2009, 6:16 pm |
‘And the purpose of dragging a busful of Viennese grammar school pupils to Auschwitz was what exactly?’
To show them what compatriots like Adolf Eichmann, Paul Blobel, Rudolf Hoess, Franz Stangl and Odilo Globocnik were capable of, you retrovirus.
| 20 May 2009, 11:24 am |
I am speaking quite often in Austrian schools to pupils aged 14-15. I almost always tell them, that the Nazis started in Austria first with the wholesale murder of so call “retarded” persons. The great majority of them was non-Jewish.
During the seven years of Nazi-rule (1938-45) in Austria, more people were executed than from the time of Maria-Theresia until 1938. The pupils ask usually intelligent questions so I am hopeful, that the trend to the right will change.
One should not generalise about an entire people, be it the British, the Jewish or the Austrian. At least we have no movement in Austrian Universities to boycott Israel Universities. The city of Vienna assisted to establish in the centre of Vienna at the Danube canal “Tel Aviv Beach” this summer. Sunday I tried with my wife to have a drink there, but every chair was occupied.
Could you British have a Tel Aviv Beach at the shore of the Thames undisturbed by Islamists and antiimps? Here the antiimps (former Trots) promised big mouthed as they are to make a constant demonstration against this by putting up “Gaza concentration camp” but after the first day of demonstration, they did not continue.
| 20 May 2009, 5:32 pm |
Many thanks, Dr. Pfeifer, for all that you do and all you have done.
Rockall666:
> Masochists! Are they getting a fair crack of the whip?
“He jests at scars who never felt a wound.”
For the rest of the world, “never again” means that we must not allow a Holocaust to recur. This has a very different significance to the people who perpetrated it in the first place.
To them it is not something horrible that happened far away, long ago. This is what their grandfathers did… and, if they’re not careful, perhaps their children will try to do it again.
Antisemitism has always moved in cycles… and when it rises, any excuse will do. I very much fear that we are seeing it rise again. For today, as always, Jews are the canary in the coal mine; the treatment your Jewish neighbor gets today could be your own treatment tomorrow.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
I guess it’s easier to recognize such rhetoric when the speaker is white… oh, no, wait… when it’s spoken in an Indo-European language… oh, I give up.