This Week

Calculating Risks

Austria's Jews silently, nervously, evaluate right-wing's rise.

RUTH E. GRUBER

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Vienna

A

s a rabbi and three guests walked home
through the streets of the city center after
having a Shabbat dinner last Friday, they
were stopped by a man in his 60s.
"I am a Roman Catholic," he told the rabbi, who
with his long beard, black coat and hat was clearly
identifiable as an Orthodox Jew. "I just wanted to
tell you how important the Jewish religion is to me."
Such are the contradictions of being a Jew in .
Austria today, where philosemitism can be used as a
personal and political tool to balance fears of rising
right-wing extremism and the lingering legacy of
Austria's Nazi past.
Earlier that day, a stony-faced President Thomas
Klestil had sworn in Austria's controversial new
right-wing government, despite diplomatic sanctions
by the European Union, Israel and the United
States.
Noisy demonstrators marched through the city
for hours, protesting the entry into the governing
coalition of the far-right, xenophobic Freedom Party
and carrying placards that compared party leader
Jorg Haider with Hitler. Riot police used water can-
nons against youthful protesters.
The rise of Haider and his Freedom Party have
triggered deep concern among Austria's 10,000 Jews,

Above: Demonstrators carry a banner reading
"Stop Racism and Xenophobia" during a demon-
stration against extreme right-wing politician
Jorg Haider in downtown Vienna, Feb. 3.

First Victims

Below: Jorg Haider, leader of Austria's right-wing
Freedom Party, sits in a TV studio in Berlin, Feb. 6

not just as Jews per se, but within the broader con-
text of concern for their country as a whole.
"Democracy and the mentality of civil society are
underdeveloped here," said a Viennese Jewish writer
just hours after the new government was sworn in.
"You can't point your figure at one moment when
fascism begins; it's little by little. It could take eight,
10, 12 years."
Said businessman Robert Liska, a member of the
local Jewish community board, "I don't think of it as
a Jewish question at all. Jews are affected as much as
are Protestants and Catholics. No one knows how it
really will be. Jews and other minorities will be
warned and will watch the situation."
Before the Freedom Party joined the governing
coalition, the president of Austria's Jewish communi-
ty, Ariel Muzikant, had been vociferous in his con-
demnation of Haider — to the point where Haider
had threatened to sue him.
As of this week, however, the Jewish community
has not taken a formal stand or issued a formal reac-
tion to the new government, pending what one
insider called "a sort of silent evaluation process."

2/11
2000

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Photo by AP/Markus Schrei ber

Related Commentary: page 34

Austria had' 185,000 Jews in 1938 when Hitler
annexed the country — with the enthusiastic sup-
port of most Austrians. Many leading Nazis, includ-
ing Hitler himself, were Austrian-born.
Nearly 70,000 Austrian Jews were killed in Nazi
death camps, and 70,000 more were driven out of
the country.
After the war, however, the Allies referred to
Austria as Hider's first victim.
There was no real confrontation or public recog-
nition of its role in the Shoah until the late 1980s,
when Austria elected Kurt Waldheim as president,
despite revelations that he hid a Nazi past.
Today, most of Austria's Jews live in Vienna, and
most are Holocaust survivors, displaced persons or
refugees from Eastern Europe and the Middle East,
and their descendants.
They run the full range, from prosperous busi-
nesspeople to intellectuals, from fervently Orthodox
to Reform, from Austrian-born to recent immigrants
from the former Soviet Union.
Haider's party came in second in last October's
elections, capturing 27 percent of the vote. It was
the best showing by a far-right party in Europe since
the end of World War II.
Most members of the Jewish community are
believed to have voted for the Social Democratic
Party, the Greens or the tiny Liberal Party.
Only one Jew is publicly known for supporting
Haider's Freedom Party — journalist Peter
Sichrovsky. He serves as a Freedom Party deputy at

