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Yet another Austrian Nazi controversy... Austria just won't admit its past
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| HardTranceProd |
This funny country, Austria. Can't come to terms with its past.
It's in the news again:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080620...ighbor_the_nazi
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VIENNA, Austria - Milivoj Asner caused a stir just by showing up at a soccer game: The frail 95-year-old is ranked No. 4 on a leading list of most-wanted Nazi war crimes suspects.
Now Austria's most notorious far-right politician, former Freedom Party leader Joerg Haider, has touched off an even bigger scandal by praising Asner as a "treasured" neighbor who should be allowed to live out his days in peace.
"This could only happen in Austria," Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Associated Press.
Officials in southern Austria, where Asner lives openly despite being indicted for crimes against humanity in his native Croatia, contend the retired police chief is mentally unfit for questioning, extradition or trial.
But Asner's recent appearance at a "fan zone" near his home in the southern city of Klagenfurt — where he reportedly looked fit and lucid as he and his wife watched Croatia play in the European Championship — has some questioning whether this alpine country with a tortured World War II past is shielding him from justice.
Asner stands accused of persecuting hundreds of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies and dispatching them to their deaths in WWII-era Croatia, which was ruled by a Nazi puppet regime.
"Austria has the habit of closing its eyes," renowned Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld told French television Thursday. The Asner case, he said, is fresh proof the country is a safe haven for suspected war criminals.
Haider's impassioned defense of Asner has only reinforced that impression.
Haider, who brought the Freedom Party into Austria's coalition government in 2000 on a platform tinged with anti-Semitic and xenophobic undertones, is the governor of the province of Carinthia where Asner lives.
"He's lived peacefully among us for years, and he should be able to live out the twilight of his life with us," Haider told the newspaper Der Standard this week.
"This is a nice family. We really treasure this family," he was quoted as saying.
Such praise is unconscionable, said Zuroff, who has been pressuring the Austrian government to arrest Asner and hand him over for trial as part of "Operation: Last Chance" — an effort to bring aging top suspects to justice before they die.
"This is clearly a reflection of the political atmosphere which exists in Austria and which in certain circles is extremely sympathetic to suspected Nazi war criminals," Zuroff said in a telephone interview from Israel.
Asner, he added, "has never showed any remorse for actions which affected the fates of hundreds of people."
Asner's indictment alleges he actively enforced racist laws while police chief in the eastern Croatian town of Pozega in 1941-42, and sent his victims to a Croat-run death camp. The Wiesenthal Center ranks him No. 4 on a list of 10 top Nazi fugitives.
Asner has maintained his innocence, and in an interview aired Thursday on state-run Croatian television, declared: "My conscience is clear."
"I am ready to come to face the court in Croatia, but I'm not in the best health," Asner said, adding that if the judges were honest, "they would have to acquit me."
He acknowledged he participated in deportations of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, but insisted the deportees were sent to their homelands and not to camps.
Austria's Justice Ministry said it is reviewing a request from Zuroff to make a fresh assessment of Asner's physical and mental state and prove he is suffering from dementia as experts have ruled in the past.
Without a new evaluation declaring him physically and mentally fit, "our hands are tied," said ministry spokesman Thomas Geiblinger.
Croatia demanded Asner's extradition in 2005, the year he was formally indicted. But the Austrians demurred, first on the grounds that he was an Austrian citizen. Later, they claimed the statute of limitations for his alleged crimes had expired.
Austria eventually conceded that Asner was not an Austrian citizen, which normally would have opened the way for his extradition. But in 2006, independent experts declared Asner mentally unfit, and they did so again in April.
Among those challenging that assessment is Gerhard Tuschla, a reporter for Austrian public broadcaster ORF. Tuschla said he recently interviewed Asner, who began living under the name George Aschner after fleeing Croatia for Austria in 1945, and found him to be "a jovial, whiskey-drinking old man."
"We suspected from the very beginning that he might have been faking it — making a specific effort to appear as unfit as possible," Zuroff said. "That might be easier to fake than physical issues."
Austrian authorities have angrily denied they are giving Asner safe haven.
Manfred Herrnhofer, a federal court spokesman in Klagenfurt, said officials are merely trying to comply with complicated extradition guidelines "and in no way are protecting a suspected Nazi war criminal."
"Austria is a constitutional state, not Guantanamo. We don't toss our principles overboard for political gain," he said.
The affair comes just as Austria takes over the chairmanship of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research — a 25-nation panel dedicated to maintaining the memory of Nazi atrocities.
Members who met in the western city of Linz this week credited Austria with making huge strides toward coming to terms with its complicity in crimes after Hitler's Germany annexed the country in 1938.
"I think that Austria is quite advanced in a number of areas where other countries are still struggling," said Yehuda Bauer, a Holocaust scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who serves as the task force's honorary chairman.
Yet right-wing politicians like Haider still exert influence, and efforts to establish an institute in Vienna to house the archives of Wiesenthal, who died in 2005, have bogged down in a dispute over funding.
Austria needs to take Asner into custody and hand him over if it wants to demonstrate it has truly overcome its dark past, Zuroff said.
"The Austrians have totally mishandled this," he said. "I really can't think of a worse way to remember the Holocaust than to not arrest a leading Nazi war crimes suspect."
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| jerZ07002 |
| quote: | "This could only happen in Austria," Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Associated Press.
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psssst......senator byrd (still a member of congress) - a former member of the KKK (a terrorist group i might add).
edit: in any event, the dude is 95. that stuff happened half a century ago and the man is about to die. i'm pretty sympathetic to jewish causes, but this is just stupid. all that would come of this is an expensive trial that would likely outlast the man's life. |
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| otec |
I don't get one thing, why you Americans care about this much?
You don't have anything to do with WW2, IBM was supporting Hitler at that time, and now it's one of the best American corp. |
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| Magnetonium |
Ouch. Poor little Austria. |
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| TranceGiant |
| what is it with hardtrancepod and his Austrian obsession :stongue: |
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| George Smiley |
What's the difference between Neil Armstrong and Michael Jackson?
Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon...
Michael Jackson s kids...
Therefore, all Americans kids...
HardTranceProd, do YOU kids? I think we all have a right to know! |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| Surprise! Another pointless thread in PDD started by a schmuck unwilling to provide any original commentary or analysis. |
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| Magnetonium |
I quite frankly dont give a and two focks if HardTranceProd posts his comments or not on the articles, especially when they are as insightful as this important article. I am happy he was able to post this IMPORTANT article on here, otherwise I would have probably missed it in the media as I dont read everything.
This thread is not as pointless as countless other threads on the forums.
OK, so lets not post any articles on the forum unless they are posted by Lebezniatnikov or George Smiley with their logic of thread-handling. Anyone else is .
But in reality - keep up posting more interesting articles, HardTranceProd ;-) just not too much about Austria, I read too much about them lately - and it might be better to merge them into one thread ... I know some people can get ticked off when posting articles like this, but that was expected.
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by jerZ07002
psssst......senator byrd (still a member of congress) - a former member of the KKK (a terrorist group i might add).
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Yes, KKK was responsible for crimes against humanity, including genocide, just like the Nazis.
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in any event, the dude is 95. that stuff happened half a century ago and the man is about to die. i'm pretty sympathetic to jewish causes, but this is just stupid. all that would come of this is an expensive trial that would likely outlast the man's life. |
Why the hell they did NOT bring him to justice between 1945 and NOW? 63 YEARS is too much time to decide? With #4 ranking murderer of the WW2 Nazi camp? Kinda sets a great precedent, dont you think?
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
OK, so lets not post any articles on the forum unless they are posted by Lebezniatnikov or George Smiley with their logic of thread-handling. Anyone else is .
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If you think an article is worth posting, it's at least common courtesy to explain why. Or to give some sort of prompt for responses. Instead, you get people in this thread saying "gee, terrible" and that's all you're going to get. I'm all for elevating discourse on this forum, but if you're for creating nothing but a newswire for topics that already have three threads devoted to it, have at it champ.  |
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| culorut |
His sorry ass should be killed immediately, no doing time, no long working days until he kicks over. Kill him in front of everyone and set an example for once.
He sent hundreds if not thousands to their death beds for no reason other then he was and still is a fuking nazi.
Eye for an eye, the fukin sucker should not have the right to be sipping coffee freely no matter what country he is hiding in.
I think I got the point across pretty straight forward. |
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