Jewish Students Face off with Austrian Speaker

The Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, Austria (Flickr).

Jewish students prevented Austria’s far-right speaker of the lower house of parliament from laying a wreath in remembrance of the victims of the Kristallnacht pogrom on November 8, 2024, according to The Times of Israel. The recent Austrian elections resulted in the victory of the pro-Russia, eurosceptic Freedom Party (FPO), after which the lower house elected Walter Rosenkranz, a controversial figure.

Members of Austria’s Jewish population have argued that Rosenkranz is not a suitable candidate because of his continuing membership of far-right groups and his praises for a Nazi-party prosecutor, which Rosenkranz has since said was an error, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The Austrian Union of Jewish Students blocked Rosenkranz with a banner that read “the word of whoever honors Nazis is worthless,” and told him they did not want to remember the Night of Broken Glass with him, according to Yahoo. Jewish students refused to let him pass through Vienna's main Holocaust Memorial, with one of them saying, “we don't want you to spit in our faces and those of our ancestors." Rosenkranz replied, “you are insulting me,” as his police escort looked on, according to MSN.

After asking the students to move away, Rosenkranz later had to concede, saying, “I will yield to your violence. You are forcibly preventing me from approaching,” according to MSN. Following this, Rosenkranz was visibly agitated and left, as seen in video footage released by public broadcaster ORF.

Rosenkranz was also not invited to the official remembrance ceremony organized by Austria's main Jewish organization, with its president saying it was “impossible to remember the victims together with such a person,” per CBS19. Rosenkranz had earlier pledged to maintain Austria's stance against anti-Semitism while rejecting claims that he endangered the Jewish community, according to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

The FPO, Rosenkranz’s party, is funded by former Nazis, and has often faced accusations of antisemitism, which it denies, according to El Paso Inc. It was also founded in the 1950s under a leader who had been a senior SS officer and Nazi lawmaker, according to MSN. 

These student protests against Rosenkranz took place alongside the larger protests in Vienna against the FPO. Now, the second-place conservative People's Party is negotiating with the third-place Social Democrats to form a three-party coalition government, deliberately excluding the FPO. The FPO has criticized this potential alliance as a "coalition of losers,” according to Reuters. 

Due to the Jewish Religious Community's (IKG) longstanding policy of not engaging with Freedom Party (FPO) officials, Rosenkranz was also absent from another Kristallnacht commemoration held at a different Holocaust memorial site, according to Reuters. 

Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, was a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi-controlled territories. In Vienna, one of the epicenters of this violence, numerous synagogues and Jewish places of worship were demolished, while thousands of Jewish-owned businesses were ransacked and plundered.