‘Austria, Living in Past, Rejects Its Recent History’

In his article (Editorial Pages, May 17), “Austria, Living in Past, Rejects Its Recent History,” Erich Vogt painted an utterly distorted picture of Austria. While it is true that our country after 1945, has clearly rejected Nazism and Pan-Germanism, there is no amnesia about the period 1938 to 1945.

Austria was effectively denazified. Under a law passed in February of 1947, Nazi influence was eliminated under the supervision of the Allied Powers (among them, of course, the United States). Within one year more than 100,000 former Nazis were removed from public office, thousands were put in jail and in 43 cases death sentences were pronounced by Austrian courts. Nazi activities are still banned by law and offenses are criminally prosecuted. Nazi ideology is as abhorrent to the Austrians as to the people of this country.

Ever since World War II, parties and candidates of the extreme right have had very little success in Austria and received a maximum of 3.2% of the vote.

Austrians are not indifferent to history’s greatest crime and have always accepted moral co-responsibility for Nazism as evidenced by the series of legislative acts providing for financial compensation in favor of Austrian victims of Nazi persecution, dating back to 1947.

Not only were a number of museums and exhibitions dedicated to the tragic period of 1938-45, there also have been numerous literary accounts, plays, conferences and TV documentaries, some of them very critical.

One example is the film, “38,” by Wolfgang Glueck, which is based on a novel by Austrian Jewish writer Friedrich Torberg and this year was nominated for the Academy Award as best foreign-language film. It was produced with financial help from the Austrian government.

In 1986 alone, 61,840 Austrian schoolchildren visited the infamous Mauthausen concentration camp. Earlier last month, the planting of 65,000 trees for a commemorative forest near Vienna--one for each of the city’s perished Jews--was started by Viennese schoolchildren.

Austria has become a country of first asylum for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from persecution and aggression, many of them Jewish. It plays a key role for Soviet and Iranian Jews on their way to freedom. Since 1968 more than 260,000 have passed through Austria.

At the 1984 commemoration of the Holocaust, Austria received the Humanitarian Award for its role in the Jewish refugee program. Austrians were also active in securing the release of Israeli prisoners of war and helping to allow Ethiopian Jews to emigrate.

The figures quoted in Vogt’s column about alleged anti-Semitism in Austria seem highly exaggerated. In a recent very representative poll by leading public opinion research institutes, 8% of Austrians were found to dislike Jews, but 22% of the people surveyed declared to have an outright liking for them.

Austria is aware that in order to overcome the legacy of the past still more will have to be done in the future. Not to forget, but to heal and reconcile. To pass summary judgment over Austria and its people in blatant disregard of historic facts and the country’s postwar record is surely not the way to achieve this objective.

NIKOLAUS SCHERK

Consul General

of Austria

Los Angeles