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Holocaust re-education slated for prosecutors

Budding Austrian judges and prosecutors will be required to take World War II history lessons, the justice ministry said on Friday, after a controversial ruling sparked outrage among Holocaust survivors.

Published: 11 March 2016 19:59 CET

Holocaust re-education slated for prosecutors

Mauthausen survivor Arieh Bleier at Shaar Menashe Mental Health Center for Holocaust survivors in Pardes, Hanna, Israel, 20 November 2010. Photo: EPA/GILI YAARI

The scandal erupted in February when the prosecutor's office in the southern city of Graz decided to drop its case against a right-wing magazine, which had described detainees freed from the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1945 as “mass murderers” and “a plague”.

In an article published last summer, Aula magazine wrote: “The fact that a significant number of liberated prisoners from Mauthausen wreaked havoc on the population is considered proven by the courts and only concentration camp fetishists contest this today”.

Prosecutors in Graz launched an investigation for incitement of hatred, but unexpectedly announced last month that they would not pursue the case.

It was “understandable”, they argued, that the release of several thousand people — including potential “criminals” — had posed a “nuisance” to locals.

Soviet prisoners at the liberation of Mauthausen. Photo: US Military Tribunal

The statement unleashed a storm of criticism, with the justice ministry calling the decision “incomprehensible”.

As a result, new judges and prosecutors will now be required to complete a 20th-century history module as part of their training.

The course, which will heavily focus on Austria under the Nazi regime, will include a visit to the Mauthausen camp, where 200,000 people were incarcerated between 1938 and 1945.

Nearly half of them died — through disease or being beaten, gassed, shot or worked to death in granite quarries and armament factories.

'We will fight for our Germany': Holocaust survivor issues warning to far right

Knobloch addressing the Bundestag on Wednesday. Photo: DPA

In an emotional speech to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Knobloch told the Bundestag lower house of parliament that extremists and conspiracy theorists were exploiting fears around the pandemic and a diversifying society.

“We must not forget for a single day how fragile the precious achievements of the last 76 years are” since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp on January 27th, 1945.

“Anti-Semitic thought and words draw votes again, are socially acceptable again — from schools to corona protests and of course the internet, that catalyst for hatred and incitement of all kinds.”

Knobloch, 88, a former leader of Germany's 200,000-strong Jewish community who survived the Holocaust in hiding as a child in Bavaria, warned that the enemies of democracy are stronger than many think”.

“I call on you: take care of our country,” she said, describing right-wing extremism as “the greatest danger for all” in Germany.

'You lost your fight'

Addressing deputies of the hard-right Alternative for Germany, the largest opposition group in parliament with nearly 100 seats, Knobloch accused many of its followers of “picking up the tradition” of the Nazis.

“I tell you: you lost your fight 76 years ago,” Knobloch said. “You will continue to fight for your Germany and we will keep fighting for our Germany.”

Knobloch fought back tears as she recounted the terror of the Nazis' rise and the deportation of her grandmother, Albertine Neuland, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp where she starved to death in 1944.

READ ALSO: 'Fight against forgetting': Germany marks Holocaust anniversary in shadow of coronavirus

“I stand before you as a proud German, against all odds and although much still makes it unlikely. Sadness, pain, desperation and loneliness accompany me.”

The window of a new synagogue which opened in Konstanz in November 2019. Photo: DPA

But she said Germany's enduring commitment to reckon with its history made her hopeful.

“I am proud of the young people in our country. They are free of guilt for the past but they assume responsibility for today and tomorrow: interested,
passionate and courageous.”

However Bundestag speaker Wolfgang Schaeuble, a respected elder statesman,
warned that the German consensus around atonement for the Nazis' crimes, long
seen as part of the bedrock of the post-war order, was showing signs of vulnerability.

He told the chamber it was “devastating” to admit that “our remembrance culture does not protect us from a brazen reinterpretation or even a denial of history”.

“And it doesn't protect us from new forms of racism and anti-Semitism,” said Schaeuble, 78.

Jewish journalist and activist Marina Weisband, 33, also urged continued vigilance.

“To be Jewish in Germany is to know it happened and can happen again,” she said.

“Anti-Semitism doesn't begin when shots are fired at a synagogue,” she said, referring to an extremist attack in the eastern city of Halle in October 2019.

READ ALSO: 'It doesn't change my feeling about Germany': Jewish community fearful but defiant after Halle attack

“The Shoah did not begin with gas chambers… It is not extinct, this conviction that there are people whose dignity is worth more than others'.”

Germany has officially marked Holocaust Remembrance Day every January 27th
since 1996 with a solemn ceremony at the Bundestag featuring a speech by a survivor and commemorations across the country.

Of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, more than one million were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, most in its notorious gas chambers, along with tens of thousands of others including homosexuals, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.

This year's anniversary is marked by growing concerns about extremist violence and incitement in Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has spoken of her “shame” over rising anti-Semitism, as the Jewish community has warned that coronavirus conspiracy theories are being used to stir hatred.

In a speech recorded for Remembrance Day, Merkel thanked the elderly survivors “who muster the strength to tell the story of their lives”.

“Their first-hand accounts show us just how vulnerable human dignity is and
how easily the values that underpin peaceful coexistence can be violated,” she
said.

Anti-Jewish crimes have risen steadily, with 2,032 offences recorded in 2019, up 13 percent on the previous year, according to the latest official figures.

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