About 200 people gathered on Tuesday, November 11, in Vienna to protest against an organization led by the far-right president of the National Council, the lower house of Parliament, over an event in memory of a Nazi politician.
Against the calls of historians, the president of the National Council, Walter Rosenkranz, defended the holding of a “Dinghofer Symposium”, it should be about freedom “threatened by censorship and dogmatism”with the presentation of medals and journalism prizes in the name of Franz Dinghofer.
Former mayor of the city of Linz, vice-chancellor and minister of justice in the 1920s, he “was an ardent anti-Semite”according to historians who were moved in a recent open letter about holding such an event. “He was the founder of the Pan-German Union” And “in 1940 he joined the NSDAP” (Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party), these historians write, was supported by the Jewish community and other parties represented in Parliament.
” Embarrassed “
Coming in first in the last Austrian legislative elections, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO, far right) found no allies to govern, but managed to get Walter Rosenkranz elected as chairman of the National Council. The FPO has repeatedly organized events dedicated to Franz Dinghofer since 2010, claiming that after his overthrow and takeover, he was actually a “victims of the Nazi regime”. But this year, Rosenkranz made it an official Parliamentary event.
About 200 people gathered at the front on Tuesday to show their disapproval, according to Agence France-Presse journalists who were present at the scene. “Dinghofer was an anti-Semite and a member of the Nazi Party during World War II”argued Lia Guttmann, co-president of the Union of Austrian Jewish Students.
For him, the demonstration was a… “rival symposium” contrary to what he described“historical amnesia”. Some demonstrators held up posters bearing those words “There is no place for anti-Semitism”or simply ” Embarrassed “.
The event occurred just after the 87th anniversary of the “Kristallnacht” pogrom, on November 9-10, 1938 – eight months after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. The FPÖ, founded by former Nazis, rejected the criticism “smear campaign”.
