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today’s ” AR-online” again AR-Online recent issues: November 1999 October 1999 September 1999 August 1999 July 1999 June 1999 May 1999 April 1999 March 1999 February 1999 January 1999 December 1998 November 1998 October 1998 September 1998 August 1998 July 1998 some traditional enemies of Free Speech: Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai Brith, USA Australian B’nai Brith Anti-Defamation Commission Board of Deputies of British Jews Canadian Jewish
Congress Canadian League of Human Rights of the B’nai Brith Coalition for Human Dignity, Oregon Community Security Trust of Board of Deputies Jewish Telegraph Agency Searchlight and Gerald Gable Surfwatch Internet censorship Alphabetical index (text) London, Sunday 10 October 1999 Austrian shift to Right risks Jewish exodus By Philip Sherwell in Vienna VIENNA’S Jews are threatening to quit Austria if the far-Right leader Jorg Haider wins a place in the new governing coalition.
His Freedom Party made a stunning breakthrough in last weekend’s elections, surging past the traditional conservatives into second place. In a city whose cultural life before the Holocaust was dominated by a Jewish community that included the likes of Freud, Mahler and Kafka , Vienna’s remaining 9,000 Jews are disgusted by the success of a populist politician who lauded Hitler’s labour policy and dismissed concentration camps as merely “punishment centres”.
Austria faces weeks of political paralysis and coalition negotiations amid the prospect that Mr Haider, who visits London this week as part of his attempt to carve out a role as a statesman, will become the first extreme Right-winger to win national office in Europe since 1945.
In last weekend’s vote the weakened socialists held on to first place but their former conservative coalition partners slipped to third – although they still hope to climb back above the Freedom Party after the final 200,000 postal votes are counted this week. Those among Austria’s eight million population with most to fear from Mr Haider’s success are the one million of foreign origin – the mainstay of his “Austria First” electoral platform was a raft of anti-foreigner measures.
But for Vienna’s Jews, the fact that he secured more than 27 per cent of the vote is a chilling development in a country that welcomed Hitler’s troops when they marched in for the 1938 Anschluss (annexation). Their fear is not an outbreak of anti-Semitic violence or a