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AUSTRIAN HISTORY

Hitler’s Austrian hometown still honours two Nazis, says association

An Austrian association Thursday demanded that Adolf Hitler's hometown of Braunau rename two streets commemorating Nazis and withdraw honourary citizenship from a composer linked to the dictator, denouncing an "insult to victims".

Hitler's Austrian hometown still honours two Nazis, says association
Protesters gather outside the house where Adolf Hitler was born during the anti-Nazi protest in Braunau Am Inn, Austria on April 18, 2015. (Photo by JOE KLAMAR / AFP)

“It is difficult to believe that in the birthplace of Hitler one of his associates is still an honorary citizen,” Willi Mernyi, president of the Austrian Mauthausen Committee, said in a statement.

He was referring to Josef Reiter (1862-1939), an “ardent national-socialist closely linked to the Fuhrer” who was also born in Braunau. Reiter and “another Nazi fanatical who hated Jews”, Franz Resl, have streets named after them, the association says. “It is an insult to victims that must end immediately,” the association said.

The mayor’s office in Braunau did not immediately respond when contacted by AFP.

The Mauthausen Committee was a Resistance network that began in the homonymous concentration camp in 1944 and works to maintain the memory of the crimes committed there.   

In 2016, the Austrian government bought the house in the small town on the German border where Hitler was born in 1889 and began transforming it into a police station to avoid it becoming a neo-Nazi pilgrimage site.

Austria is regularly criticised for not fully recognising its history. Earlier this year, a group of authors tried without success to have five of the country’s nine regional anthems re-written because they were the works of Nazi sympathisers.   

“Our anthem is our anthem and we are not going to let someone else change it,” Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the conservative president of Lower Austria, said at the time. Her region’s anthem was written by a member of the Nazi party who supported Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938.   

In 2022, the city of Linz renamed several streets with problematic names, including one named after Ferdinand Porsche, the founder of the car company, because of his Nazi past.

In total, 65,000 Austrian Jews were assassinated and 130,000 forced into exile.

The FPO extreme-right party, founded by former Nazis, has participated in three post-war governments and is leading in polls ahead of legislative elections to be held in 2024.

INTERVIEW: By becoming Austrian, I’ve reclaimed my family’s terrible story

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AUSTRIAN HISTORY

Austria recognises ‘anti-socials’, ‘career criminals as Nazi victims

Austria's parliament on Wednesday decided unanimously to recognise concentration camp inmates who were persecuted by the Nazis for being considered 'anti-social' or 'career criminals' as victims of National Socialism.

Austria recognises 'anti-socials', 'career criminals as Nazi victims

During the Nazi era, people who had served a prison sentence of more than six months were persecuted as “career criminals” or “anti-social”, with many of them deported to concentration camps.

After World War II, these victims of Nazi persecution were not entitled to an official certificate or a victim’s identification card.

“With this amendment, we are righting a wrong,” said parliamentary rapporteur Eva Blimlinger of the Greens.

READ ALSO: When is dual citizenship allowed in Austria?

“Namely that in 1947, convicted people were excluded from compensation laws,” she said, adding that the amendment was “only a symbolic act” as there are no known survivors.

According to a study by DOeW resistance archive centre — which is due to be made public in early July — 885 Austrians who fell under that collective category were deported to the Mauthausen camp.

On Wednesday, MPs were reminded of the case of Alfred Gruber, a Viennese convicted of burglary in 1936.

Although Gruber had served his sentence and had not reoffended, he was deported after Austria was annexed by the German Third Reich in 1938 and “the stigma continued after the end of the war”, recalled Social Democrat MP Sabine Schatz.

Among the victims were also “homosexuals, political opponents and simple defenders of democracy”, said liberal MP Fiona Fiedler.

READ ALSO: What is Austria’s church tax and how do I avoid paying it?

In 2020, Germany adopted a similar law, estimating that “at least 70,000 people” could be affected.

Homeless people, beggars, migrant workers and alcoholics were also targeted in Nazi persecution.

Austria — the birthplace of Adolf Hitler — long cast itself as a victim of Nazism and has only in the past decades begun to seriously examine its role in the Holocaust.

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