by Eli Leon and Reuters
2 percent of respondents in an Austrian survey say that "not everything was bad under Adolf Hitler" • And 61% of Austrians want a "strong person" to lead the country, who "doesn’t need to worry about parliament or elections," survey finds.
1938: Austrians welcome the
Nazis to their country.
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Photo credit: GettyImages |
An Austrian survey has found that 42 per cent
of respondents said that "not everything was bad under Adolf Hitler,"
whose Nazi government annexed Austria 75 years ago.
The survey also found that 54% of the 502
respondents said a Nazi party would have some success in democratic
elections today, and that 61% supported the concept of a "strong man" as
leader "who doesn’t need to worry about parliament or elections."
The poll was commissioned by the Austrian
daily newspaper Der Standard, and was reported on by the Austria Press
Agency on Friday, a day before publication by the paper.
The results of the survey are worrying because in 2008 only a fifth of Austrian citizens espoused the idea of a strong leader.
The survey also found that just 15% of
respondents felt that the Nazi annexation should have been opposed by
force, while 42% thought that war with Germany would have made their
country's situation worse. Another 43% said that doing so wouldn't have
made a difference.
After decades of airbrushing it out of
history, Austria has come a long way in acknowledging its Nazi past, and
the 75th anniversary on Tuesday of its annexation by Hitler's Third
Reich will be the occasion for various soul-searching ceremonies.
But Jewish leaders who fought hard to win
restitution after World War II are on guard against a rising trend in
anti-Semitic incidents, occasionally condemned by Austrian political
leaders but seen more generally as a regrettable fact of life.
Austrian Jews have grown more vigilant as
hooligans verbally abused a rabbi, Austria's popular far-right party
chief posted a cartoon widely seen as suggestively anti-Semitic, and a
debate opened on the legality of infant male circumcision.
The new poll, timed to coincide with the
anniversary of the annexation, found that three of five Austrians wanted
a "strong man" to lead the country and two out of five thought things
were not all bad under Adolf Hitler. This was higher than in previous
surveys.
Eli Leon and Reuters
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=7849
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