Batter Up!
Posted on 09/01/2012 11:56:44 PM PDT by Nachum
A rabbi was attacked over the weekend in Vienna, Austria, by local soccer fans.
According to local media reports, the fans, who were on their way to a game, met Rabbi Schlomo Hoffmeister and screamed at him, “Move, Jew - Jews out, Heil Hitler.” According to the rabbi, they also saluted with the Nazi salute.
Rabbi Hoffmeister claimed that police officers standing nearby refused to intervene. When he asked for their help, they reportedly replied, “It’s just soccer.”
Local police later said they will investigate the claims and will work to catch both the police officers and the fans who were involved in the incident.
“Anti-Semitic insults in the streets of Vienna are commonplace, but when it happens in front of the police, it is unprecedented. The fact that [the officers] did nothing about it and even smiled is an experience that left me in shock,” said Rabbi Hoffmeister.
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
Dog bites man.
Some never learn. Europe may fall apart.
I wish I had been there—I would have kicked some nazi a$$...
I wish I had been there—I would have kicked some nazi a$$...
Israel plays in European FIFA while its neighbors play in Asia...they might have to play in North or South America or Oceania now.
Jews must travel with a posse in such places. It’s just commonsense.
...the fans, who were on their way to a game, met Rabbi Schlomo Hoffmeister and screamed at him, "Move, Jew -- Jews out, Heil Hitler." According to the rabbi, they also saluted with the Nazi salute. Rabbi Hoffmeister claimed that police officers standing nearby refused to intervene. When he asked for their help, they reportedly replied, "It's just soccer."
Austria and Vienna in particular has a sordid history with the genocidal version of anti-Semitism. They actively sought and celebrated the Anschluss and liquidated their Jewish population with frightening speed.
After the war they tried to re-write history into that they were overtaken by Germany and were victims.
Seems not much has changed.
Austrian Nazis were so over the top that the German Nazis frequently had to tell them to take it down a notch.
Batter Up!
Hitler wouldn’t have been so anti-semitic had he grown up in Germany, rather than Austria.
We have no way to know that for sure, but it is very plausibly correct.
Although the remarks to the rabbi were insulting and that kind antisemitic hate speech may well be a crime in Austria, I honestly don't know if you are overreacting. Depends on the frequency of this kind of stuff and if these incidents frequently escalate into violence.
My guess is that the perps might have been thinking of violence but that the sight of the police deterred them.
After the war they tried to re-write history into that they were overtaken by Germany and were victims.
You raise an issue that makes for an interesting historical debate. I know that there were both pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi groups in Austria at the time of the Anschluss. I once had an interesting conversation with an anti-Nazi German man who had left Germany and came to the US a few years before, then went to Austria to engage in anti-Nazi activism and came back to the US just in the nick of time to possibly save his life.
FWIW, the well-know musical, "The Sound of Music," is set in the time frame of the Annschluss and features an anti-Nazi and patriotic Austrian aristocrat named Von Trapp who, IIRC, is forced to leave his native country for Switzerland.
Another question: if the anti-semitism in Austria was so ingrained for so long at the time of the Anschluss, then why and how did Vienna have a fairly large and thriving Jewish community up to then?
The same could be asked of Poland/Lithuania.
Disagree. Before the Holocaust, Jews in western Europe were, in general, much better educated and accomplished and wealthier than their cohorts in eastern Europe.
It is a little like asking a similar question about the Muslims as well. Up until the horror really started, the Jewish community thought as themselves as loyal subjects of Austria. Yes there were some Austrians who resisted the Nazis, but they were few and far between. The Jewish community refused to see that the Nazis wanted to murder them all. Most denied it up until it was too late to run.
Where could they go? Who would take the many Jews running for their lives? Even the U.S. resisted accepting many thousands of refugees, most of whom died in the camps.
When the modern state of Israel was born, over 800,000 Jews were expelled from Islamic countries, their property confiscated. Fortunately for them, there was an Israel to run to. There was an Israel that was armed and prepared to defend them too. That did not exist in 1938.
When the modern state of Israel was born, over 800,000 Jews were expelled from Islamic countries, their property confiscated. Fortunately for them, there was an Israel to run to. There was an Israel that was armed and prepared to defend them too. That did not exist in 1938.
Yes, I'm aware of that sad history of the Nazi era. I was merely commenting on another post stating, as I understood it, that Austria had had a particular notorious history of antisemitism going back before then and noted that such a statement ran somewhat counter to the existence of a thriving Jewish community during the late 19th and earlier 20th century.
As far as possible places for Austrian Jews to escape to in the period directly before the Anschluss, some went to the US (though limited by the Roosevelt Administration), some to Britain (like Freud), some (ultimately less fortunate) to other western European countries, some to Canada, and some to Palestine. Yes, there was no modern Israel at the time and the Jews in Palestine had to organize their own militia groups for self-defense, but European Jews in Palestine had a much greater chance of survival if they migrated there than if they had stayed. But it is difficult in retrospect to criticize those who made the wrong decision and stayed, because it would have been impossible for many to foresee a Holocaust of such immense proportions.
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