Jewish students block Austrian far-right wreath laying

[Pelican Press 0]

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******* students block Austrian far-right wreath laying

******* students in Vienna have prevented the first far-right speaker of Austria’s lower house of parliament from laying a wreath in remembrance of the Nazis’ 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, arguing he was abusing the memory of its victims.

After the eurosceptic, Russia-friendly Freedom Party (FPO) won the most seats in a parliamentary election for the first time in its history in September, the new lower house elected FPO nominee Walter Rosenkranz as its speaker two weeks ago.

Those who opposed him in parliament and the leader of the body formally representing Austria’s Jews said he was not a suitable candidate because of his continued membership of a far-right fraternity and his past praise for a ***** prosecutor, which Rosenkranz has since said was a mistake.

Protesters including members of the Austrian Union of ******* Students held hands to form a cordon around a Holocaust memorial in the historic centre of Vienna where Rosenkranz had been due to lay a wreath in his official capacity. They held a banner that read: “The word of those who honour Nazis is worthless”.

In a tense stand-off, a protester told Rosenkranz: “We do not want you to ***** in our ancestors’ faces”, to which Rosenkranz replied: “You are insulting me” as his police ******* looked on.

After initially asking the protesters to make way, Rosenkranz said: “I will yield to your *********. You are forcibly preventing me from approaching.”

Since the ******* Religious Community (IKG), the body that formally represents Austria’s Jews, has long refused to hold meetings with FPO officials, Rosenkranz did not attend a separate Kristallnacht ceremony around the same time at another Holocaust memorial.

Kristallnacht, or the night of broken glass, known in Austria as the November Pogroms, was a coordinated wave of intense ********* against Jews across the ***** Third Reich. Vienna was a major centre of that *********, with dozens of synagogues and prayer houses destroyed and thousands of ******* shops looted.

It began on November 9, 1938, roughly eight months after ***** Germany annexed Austria.

Friday’s protest took place as the party that came second in September’s election, the ************* People’s Party, is holding coalition talks with the third-placed Social Democrats with a view to forming a three-party government excluding the FPO, which has branded that plan a “coalition of losers”.

The FPO was founded in the 1950s under a leader who had been a senior SS officer and ***** MP.

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