A group of Jewish students on Friday prevented Austria’s first far-right parliamentary speaker from laying a wreath at a Holocaust memorial, accusing him of “spitting in the faces of our ancestors”.
Parliament elected Freedom Party (FPOe) lawmaker Walter Rosenkranz as speaker after his far-right party topped national polls in September for the first time ever.
Rosenkranz faces widespread criticism for being a member of a far-right student fraternity known for its strident pan-German nationalism. The country’s main Jewish organisation has ruled out participating in events with him.
As Austria marked the 86th anniversary of the anti-Jewish Kristallnacht — or the Night of Broken Glass — pogrom on Friday, several Jewish demonstrators blocked Rosenkranz from laying a wreath at Vienna’s main Holocaust memorial.
Carrying a banner of the Austrian Union of Jewish Students group that read “The word of whoever honours Nazis is worthless”, they told Rosenkranz they didn’t want to remember the pogrom with him.
“We don’t want you to spit in our faces and those of our ancestors,” one of them said, according to video footage by public broadcaster ORF.
After they refused to let him pass through, Rosenkranz — visibly agitated — left.
He was not invited to the official remembrance ceremony organised by Austria’s main Jewish organisation with its president saying it was “impossible to remember the victims together with such a person.”
After being elected parliamentary speaker, Rosenkranz vowed to continue the country’s fight against anti-Semitism, dismissing accusations he posed a threat to the Jewish community as a “lie”.
The FPOe — founded by former Nazis — has frequently faced accusations of anti-Semitism, which it denies.
