2024-01-30 13:02:44

With a ceremony in the Palais Lower Austria this Tuesday, Austria honored the thousands of Nazi expellees who regained Austrian citizenship as a result of an amendment to the law five years ago. “With them as part of society, I am far less worried regarding the future of this country,” said Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) in the direction of twelve “neo-Austrians” from all over the world who had come to Vienna.

Schallenberg made the comments in the presence of former Chancellor Brigitte Bierlein and former Interior Minister Wolfgang Peschorn, during whose term of office the amendment was passed with the consent of all National Council parties. The new paragraph 58c of the Citizenship Act extended a provision that previously only applied to direct Nazi expellees to also include their descendants.

The minister expressly thanked the now 26,000 people for accepting the Austrian passport on this basis. “You have shown an act of trust,” emphasized Schallenberg, alluding to the injustice done to those affected or their ancestors and Austria’s decades-long refusal to take responsibility for it. Austrian society has “lied to itself for far too long” regarding its history, but is now seeking to confront it all the more consciously and emphatically, the former Chancellor emphasized.

The reason for the event was the presentation of the book “We and Austria – 15 Voices”, in which 15 people reported on their return to the Austrian state association. While Evelyn Konrad (95), who fled from Vienna to the USA at the age of eight, had to be persuaded by her children to accept an Austrian passport, the Briton Alex Boyt (66) openly said that Brexit had motivated him to apply. “I didn’t want to be deprived of my European belonging,” said the great-grandson of psychoanalysis inventor Sigmund Freud, who fled from Vienna to London in 1938. Boyt also used his appearance to criticize Israel’s “disproportionate” response to the Hamas massacre.

Israeli-born Dorit Straus (76) said that she did it for her father, who fled Vienna. After arriving in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, he was stateless, even though he loved his hometown of Vienna so much as a musician and it had given him so much. “If this state now offers me citizenship, I cannot refuse it,” said Straus, who now lives in New York. Love brought the Argentinian Ezekiel Max (23) back to the land of his ancestors. At a memorial event in Auschwitz in 2018, he met a Viennese woman and decided to emigrate to the city that his great-aunt, who had died five years earlier, had always raved regarding to him. “She described a fairytale Vienna to me,” said the student in perfect German.

The event was actually supposed to take place in November, but shortly following the Hamas massacre no one felt like celebrating, Schallenberg reported. He recalled that among the hostages kidnapped by the terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip was an Israeli-Austrian father.

Schallenberg reiterated Austria’s support for Israel, not only out of historical responsibility, but also because it is the only democracy in the Middle East and democracies must stand together. At the same time, he reiterated Austria’s commitment to a two-state solution with Palestine, even if that is currently “illusory”. “Ultimately, this is the only thing that will contribute to Israel’s security,” he emphasized.

Schallenberg expressed concern regarding the impact of the Middle East conflict on Austrian society. In this regard, he recalled that the participants in the solidarity rally with Israel in October were officially advised not to walk through the city center of Vienna with Israeli flags and Jewish headgear and to avoid the pro-Palestine rally that was taking place at the same time. “This is getting under my skin, it shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” said the minister. “The ‘Never once more’ is now,” he called on all people in Austria to stand up and take action once morest anti-Semitism at any time.

The president of the Israelite Community in Vienna (IKG), Oskar Deutsch, said that the “never once more” was heard “a thousand times” as recently as Saturday on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day. But following the Hamas massacre on October 7th it became clear who was serious and for whom it was “just an empty phrase,” Deutsch called on official Austria to be steadfast in its support of Israel. “Don’t give in an inch to the majority of despots and dictators in the UN,” he appealed to Schallenberg, who immediately assured that he would not let himself be dissuaded.

The regaining of citizenship by the Nazi victims and their descendants is “not a gift.” “It is the restitution of the citizenship that was stolen from these people and their families,” emphasized Deutsch. Unlike in the 1990s, Austria is now “more and more often perceived as a safe haven for Jews,” which is due to the politics of the past few years.

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