Austria Holocaust survivors warn of far-right revival in upcoming elections

An Austrian committee representing victims of one of the Third Reich’s biggest death camps is warning against the risk of seeing the “malicious” far-right return to power in October elections.

Founded by former Nazis in the 1950s, the Freedom Party (FPOe) is currently in third place with 24 percent in surveys of voter intentions, behind the Social Democrats (SPOe) with 27% and the centrist People’s Party (OeVP) with 32%.

But for the Mauthausen Committee, the far right still shares a “distinct closeness to Nazi ideology.”

“If someone wants to share power with the FPOe, they can’t pretend afterwards that they didn’t know about their diehard attitude,” committee chairman Willi Mernyi says in a statement.

The committee says the FPOe continued to stoke scandals “with a Nazi whiff,” citing at least 60 anti-Semitic and racist incidents involving FPOe politicians since 2013.

“They may be isolated cases but they aren’t rare or atypical,” it said in the statement.

The organization was created in memory of the 200,000 prisoners who passed through the Mauthausen concentration camp in northern Austria during World War II.

— AFP