Austrian Jewish students block far-right parliament speaker from laying Kristallnacht wreath

Jewish students in Vienna prevent the first far-right speaker of Austria’s lower house of parliament from laying a wreath in remembrance of the victims of Kristallnacht, arguing he was abusing their memory.

After the eurosceptic, Russia-friendly Freedom Party (FPO) won the most seats in a parliamentary election for the first time in its history in September, the new lower house elected FPO nominee Walter Rosenkranz as its speaker two weeks ago.

Those who oppose him in parliament and the leader of the body formally representing Austria’s Jews say he is not a suitable candidate because of his continued membership of a far-right fraternity and his past praise for a Nazi prosecutor, which Rosenkranz has since said was a mistake.

Protesters including members of the Austrian Union of Jewish Students hold hands to form a cordon around a Holocaust memorial in the historic center of Vienna where Rosenkranz had been due to lay a wreath in his official capacity. They hold a banner that read: “The word of those who honor Nazis is worthless.”

In a tense standoff, a protester tells Rosenkranz: “We do not want you to spit in our ancestors’ faces,” to which Rosenkranz replies: “You are insulting me” as his police escort looks on.

After initially asking the protesters to make way, Rosenkranz says: “I will yield to your violence. You are forcibly preventing me from approaching.”

Since the Jewish Religious Community (IKG), the body that formally represents Austria’s Jews, has long refused to hold meetings with FPO officials, Rosenkranz did not attend a separate Kristallnacht ceremony at a different Holocaust memorial at around the same time.

Kristallnacht, or The Night of Broken Glass, was a coordinated wave of intense violence against Jews across the Nazi Third Reich. Vienna was a major center of that violence, with dozens of synagogues and synagogues destroyed and thousands of Jewish shops looted.

It began on November 9, 1938, roughly eight months after Nazi Germany annexed Austria.

The FPO was founded in the 1950s under a leader who had been a senior SS officer and Nazi lawmaker.