Eighty-seven years ago, on the night of November 9-10, the Nazis burned synagogues, destroyed and looted Jewish businesses, and beat, humiliated, and murdered Jews in Austria as well. Around 4,000 were immediately deported to the Dachau concentration camp. Every year, many Austrian communities hold commemorative events for the victims of the November pogroms. This year, events are taking place again in Wels and Mödling.
For years, a dispute raged in Wels over who held where the commemoration took place. The Wels Initiative Against Fascism (Antifa Wels), an active and non-partisan group that has been involved for 40 years, refused to include the FPÖ mayor, Andreas Rabl, in their traditional memorial service. This year, as usual, Antifa held its commemoration with around 200 people at the Jewish memorial in Wels’ Pollheimerpark. The day before, on November 5th, the mayor held his own, considerably smaller, commemoration, also in Pollheimerpark. As always, the two events were separate – except that this year, not even the mayor himself was present.
His event caused a stir even before it took place this year. The official website of the city of Wels, where the Rabl commemoration was announced, omitted any mention of it being a commemoration. Instead, it advertised an event commemorating “Reichspogromnacht” (Night of Broken Glass). Furthermore, it also referred to a “fun event.”
“Mass murder is no laughing matter”
Werner Retzl, the chairman of the Wels initiative against fascism, is appalled by the entry on the city’s website: “The excuse that these things just happen doesn’t hold water. The National Socialist mass murder is not a joke and must not be portrayed as such, even on the advertising platform of the city of Wels.”
The fact that Rabl is even organizing his own commemoration, although he never appeared at the commemorations before he held the office of mayor, is, according to Willi Mernyi, the chairman of the Mauthausen Committee Austria (MKÖ), “hypocrisy beyond compare”.
This year is particularly noteworthy, as Rabl’s party caused outrage in the National Council on Tuesday with the Dinghofer Symposium . Protests against the symposium by other parliamentary parties, prominent historians such as Oliver Rathkolb and Helmut Konrad, and the president of the Jewish Community of Vienna were joined by Catholic Action. “Rabl remains silent about his party’s Nazi commemoration and is exploiting the victims of the Holocaust,” criticizes Mernyi.
On Sunday evening, the victims of the November pogroms were commemorated in Mödling, Lower Austria. Around 50 people gathered for the city’s official memorial service on Enzersdorfer Straße, the site of a synagogue that stood until 1938 and was also burned down by the Nazis. As a musical piece began, a deliberate act of disruption commenced.
From an open window
A speech by Hitler was heard loudly from a window of a nearby residential building and lasted for about a minute and a half.
Several eyewitnesses told media outlets about their shock and their attempts to pinpoint the exact window from which the dictator’s speech had come. The names of nine Jewish men and women, for whom Stolpersteine (memorial stones) are soon to be laid in Mödling, were also read out, SPÖ city councilor Stephan Schimanowa told the Niederösterreichische Nachrichten . Hitler’s speech was “extremely loud,” Schimanowa said.
On Monday, the Lower Austrian State Criminal Police Office for State Security and Extremism Prevention launched an investigation into the case. The investigation concerns suspected neo-Nazi activity. “We already have some promising leads regarding this perpetrator, and I am very optimistic that we will be able to resolve the incident soon,” Lower Austrian State Police Directorate spokesman Johann Baumschlager told the STANDARD. “It’s a detached house with several windows; I’m optimistic, but our investigators are still working on it,” Baumschlager continued. He added that there would be news “very soon.”
