The head of Vienna’s Jewish community (IKG) has claimed that the number of anti-Semitic incidents doubled in Austria in 2012, despite the country receiving an influx of Jewish immigration from fellow EU member Hungary, which has experienced a more marked escalation of anti-Jewish feeling in recent months. According to Austrian daily Kurier, Oskar Deutsch relayed his office had registered 135 reports of anti-Semitic incidents in 2012, compared to 71 the previous year.
Prominent anti-Semitic incidents in the Austrian capital included the July desecration of Jewish cemetery, which saw 43 graves vandalised in total, including a number of WWII victims.
Deutsch admitted the Mayor of Vienna Michael Haupl had promised the Austrian Jewish community to help tackle the problem, the very suggestion of such, the IG President claimed, “shows how threatening the situation is, and that we must do something”. In his comments Monday, Deutsch further called on Austrian government ministers, EU heads and civil society to launch an “outcry” against such evidence of rising anti-Semitism, as he cited Sweden, Norway, Finland, France and Greece as similar hotbeds for this fast-increasing phenomenon.
Following the release of the Jewish community report on anti-Semitism in 2012, the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO) spokesman for Justice Hannes Jarolim called on the relevant authorities to investigate incidents systematically and seek out the perpetrators. “Any rule of law, such as Austria, should ensure that anti-Semitism and Nazi propaganda is not on the agenda,” he said. “We need to all work together and not look the other way,” he added.
Jarolim previously posed a parliamentary question in early November, which saw him call on the Home Secretary to outline the government’s intended plan to combat Nazi propaganda. Jarolim asserted that the Home Office had made no discernible efforts to counter the spread of Nazi propaganda, describing it as “disappointing” that “once again” such an important socio-political cause had received such superficial treatment.
“It is a pity that those in charge are not willing to address this issue in any real sense,” concluded Jarolim. “It takes a determined ideology to ensure that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Austria will soon start to decrease.”
Jarolim further committed the support of his parliamentary party to Deutsch and the Austrian Jewish community’s fight against anti-Semitism as he insisted that “anti-Semitism and Nazi propaganda can have no place in Austria,” reiterating that it is the responsibility of politicians and the relevant authorities to step up their efforts in this regard.
There are an estimated 15,000 Jews currently living in Austria, the majority of whom in the capital of Vienna, although according the Vienna Jewish community, only 8,140 Austria Jews announced themselves as such in the 2001 national census for fear of reprisal. Austrian Jews first received full citizenship in 1867, resulting in the rapid growth of the country’s Jewish population. A century of efforts for Jewish emancipation were brought to a close however by the Nuremberg Laws replicated from neighbouring Nazi Germany, which led to a series of anti-Jewish legislation including the disbandment of Jewish organisations and institutions and forced mass emigration which led 130,000 to escape the country by October 1941, many of whom with financial aid from international Jewish organisations.
16,000 of these escapees were, however, later caught and deported from final European destinations. Following the 1942 Wannsee Conference determining the final solution for the mass extermination of Europe’s Jews, 65,000 Austrian Jews were sent to their deaths, in addition to the 47,000 already sent to ghettos, death and concentration camps. A one estimated 5,500 Austrian Jews survived by the end of Holocaust, primarily as a result of intermarrying.