VIENNA: Austria marked on Monday 80 years since its annexation by Nazi Germany, with President Alexander Van der Bellen warning against renewed racism in a country where the far-right forms part of the government.

“Austria shares responsibility for the atrocities of National Socialism,” Van der Bellen told a special ceremony in Vienna’s Hofburg palace that included ministers from the nationalist Freedom Party (FPOe).

He said that the “lesson is that discrimination is the first step towards dehumanisation, that racism and above all anti-Semitism didn’t disappear and still exist, and that it is important to raise one’s voice and stand up against all inhumane ideologies.”

In common with other European countries such as Germany and Italy, Austria has seen a rise in support for far-right parties. Elections last year brought the FPOe into government in coalition with Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s conservatives.

The FPOe, founded by ex-Nazis in the 1950s and one of Europe’s most established far-right parties, has sought to soften its image, rejecting racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance and ejecting members who step out of line.

FPOe head and Deputy Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, who flirted with neo-Nazism in his youth, on Saturday appeared on Austrian television alongside other leading politicians for the Anschluss commemorations.

Strache said it was everyone’s individual responsibility to remember “the (Nazi) terror regime that murdered people on a large scale because of their religion, their origin and their political opinions.” Strache, 48, supports the idea of a new monument in Vienna listing the names of the 66,000 Austrian Jews killed in the Holocaust and last month appointed a committee of historians to delve into the party’s history.

But since joining the ruling coalition, the FPOe has found itself embroiled in a string of embarrassing controversies over its past.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2018