Wiener Zeitung, May 13, 2021
German original: https://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/politik/oesterreich/2104108-IKG-Wien-kritisiert-Wiesenthal-Institut-scharf.amp.html
The Institute’s development has taken “a direction for which it was not founded.” At the same time, the Jewish Student Union criticizes anti-Semitic statements during a demonstration.
On Thursday, the Jewish Community Vienna (IKG) voiced criticism of the Viennese Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI). The criticism includes the current search for a director and the general direction of the Institute’s development, “for which it was not founded.” The IKG “cannot and will not accept this development and demands a clarification and a reflection on the original intentions of its founding,” reads a statement.
“Had Wiesenthal known that the VWI lets research on perpetrators fade into the background and aims to profile itself as a center of competence for genocide research, he surely would not have let the Institute remain in Vienna, but instead moved the Wiesenthal Center to Los Angeles,” added the IKG, pointing out that the Institute, founded after Wiesenthal’s death in 2006, received funding from the Republic, the City of Vienna, and the IKG.
In addition, the IKG asks “why the VWI does not conduct any research on anti-Semitism or racism, or at least condemns the constantly rising number of anti-Semitic incidents in Austria. ”Besides the research on perpetrators, these issue areas should be one of the foundations for the continued existence of the Institute and the “order of the day.“ The current search for a new director is disliked by the IKG because it misses a separation between the empirical and managerial areas of leadership.
Decisive action by politics was demanded by the Jewish Student Union (JöH) in the light of a demonstration on Vienna’s Mariahilfer Street on Wednesday. During a rally of organizations “known for their anti-Semitism” - the BSD movement, Anti-Imperial Coordination (AIK) and Dar-al-Janub - a “massive occurrence of anti-Semitic chants” was observed. Hamas-themed flags or anti-Semitic posters displaying relativizations of the Holocaust were seen, and open calls for Intifada were heard.
“Of course everybody has the right to criticize Israeli politics and to demonstrate against it, but under no circumstances may this go hand in hand with anti-Semitic organizations and messages,” demanded the JöH, “so that the conflict in the Middle East won’t be instrumentalized to fuel anti-Semitism in Europe.”