Jewish & World News

Anti-Semitism in Hungary is causing an influx of Jewish immigrants to Austria, the head of Vienna’s Jewish community reportedly said. “I am pleased people are coming but the circumstances that force them to leave Hungary due to the political situation, due to anti-Semitism, don’t please me at all,” Oskar Deutsch, president of the Vienna Jewish community, is quoted as telling the Austrian Press Agency, APA.

Austria's Jewish community (IKG) said recently it was working jointly with its German and Swiss counterparts to keep religious circumcision legal, after repeated calls for an end to the practice. The IKG was organizing an international coordinating group with the Jewish communities in neighboring Germany and Switzerland, IKG president Oskar Deutsch told the Austria Press Agency on Monday.

Reuters reported on Monday that doctors in Austria's westernmost province have been cleared to resume circumcisions, after the Justice Ministry reassured them that they can perform the religious practice without risking criminal charges. The decision comes after last week, the governor of Voralberg province in Austria instructed hospitals to halt non-medical circumcisions until the "legal situation is clarified" in his country.

A row over circumcision has spread to Austria from Germany after a state governor advised doctors against performing the procedure, even when it is on religious grounds. Markus Wallner, centre-right state premier of Vorarlberg, said the instructions followed a controversial June ruling by a court in the German city of Cologne that equated circumcision of young boys with grievous bodily harm.

A pro-Nazi text has been discovered under a statue at a war memorial in Vienna, Austrian officials say. The document - expressing hopes of the German people's unification under the Sonnenrad - a reference to the Nazi swastika - was found in a capsule under the statue of the Unknown Soldier, the BBC reported on Friday.

The leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party is taking a public relations beating after refusing to apologize for likening anti-fascist protesters to a Nazi mob and his supporters to Jews. Heinz-Christian Strache's comment that "We are the new Jews" to an undercover journalist at a Vienna ball that critics say draws right-wing extremists has caused uproar and triggered at least a temporary setback for his resurgent euroskeptic party.

Vienna - Austrian government officials have honored Holocaust victims during a special ceremony in parliament. The commemoration coincided with the anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp on May 5, 1945 and featured speeches and a video about a youth project.

Austria’s warm welcome this week of Iranian’s foreign minister, along with its increasing trade relations with the Islamic Republic, signal Iran’s widening axis that already stretches to South America. Indonesia, which hosts the world’s largest Muslim population, also has embraced Iran’s “strategic ties.” Austria’s friendliness with Iran is even more significant because the European country is one of the rotating members of the United Nations Security Council. It has paid only lip service to sanctions against Iran, Simone Dinah Hartmann, director of Stop the Bomb Austria and co-editor of "Iran in the World System," wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week.

Austrian far-right presidential candidate Barbara Rosenkranz drew sharp condemnation from the country's Jewish organizations Tuesday - who highlighted her controversial stance on Holocaust deniers. 

A group of far-right skinheads took pictures of themselves at a former concentration camp in Austria last week wearing shirts with slogans saying, "I love the Nazis" and giving Hitler salutes. The men, from the Austrian town of Wels, posted photographs on the internet of themselves visiting Mauthausen, where tens of thousands of mostly Jewish inmates were killed. The far-right group was pictured wearing party hats and shirts proclaiming, "I like Nazi Rock" and "National Socialist," and drinking during their visit to the infamous site. One of the images depicted three skinheads giving the Nazi salute in front of the entrance to the gas chambers. Willi Mernyi, a spokesman for the Mauthausen memorial committee, said: "The visit was meant as provocation. These people are not dumb teenagers but adults who knew exactly what they were doing." Austria's Office for the Protection of the Constitution has began investigating the incident. It is ill...