May 26





HUNGARY:

Hungary to outlaw Holocaust denial


Holocaust denial and public incitement of racial hatred will be illegal
under constitutional changes proposed by Hungary's Socialist minority
administration.

The proposed legislation is being drafted for publication within weeks.

The government, preoccupied with the recession that has hit Eastern Europe
hard and made Hungary the host of some of the worst neo-Nazi rabble in
Europe, has planned the legal reform in response to public outrage at
recent provocations.

Education Minister Istvn Hiller has called for legislation to make
Holocaust denial a punishable offense. Interior Minister Tibor Draskovics
has proposed constitutional amendments to outlaw racist agitation
promoting hatred against any ethnic or religious minority. The amendments
would bypass the Constitutional Court that has blocked several previous
legislative attempts.

The amendments come on the heels of a demonstration provocatively staged
to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day by several neo-Nazi
organizations in the Castle district of Buda, the last foothold of the
German-Hungarian defenders of this city against the Soviet invasion at the
close of World War II.

The participants at the meeting included a 60-member uniformed "battalion"
of the banned Hungarian Guard organization. The paramilitary movement is
modeled on the murderous wartime Nazi Arrow Cross. Speakers addressing the
demonstration stated that the Holocaust was a myth.

Hungary as well as its post-Communist Eastern European neighbors has
witnessed since the onset of the global recession an intensification of
right-wing violence described by Draskovics as political terrorism.

(source: JTA)






UKRAINE:

French priest tracks WWII killing of Jews


A French priest has been investigating the mass executions of Jews shot
during World War II in eastern Europe and thinks the death estimates have
been low.

The Rev. Patrick Desbois recently published "Holocaust By Bullets," which
describes his research so far, The Times of London reported Friday. He
began his work five years ago after visiting the remains of a camp in
Ukraine where his grandfather was held as a prisoner of war and learning
that 7,500 Jews were executed there.

Desbois spoke Monday at the University of Manchester in England.

No one knows exactly how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust, though
estimates have run to nearly 6 million. Desbois said those estimates may
have to be revised upward because those killed by the Einsatzgruppen,
units assigned to carry out executions, were undercounted compared with
those killed in the death camps.

"Every village was a crime scene and each case was different because the
heads of the killing squads had to take in all the different factors --
the geography, the transport available, the proximity of partisans --
before organizing the most efficient massacre," Desbois said.

(source: United Press International)






AUSTRIA:

Holocaust-survivor attackers released from detention


The two 16-year old Upper Austrian teenage boys who attacked French and
Italian Holocaust survivors earlier this month were released from
preventive detention yesterday (Mon).

The Wels public prosecutors office confirmed the news today. An office
spokesman added the court had imposed certain conditions on the boys. They
are to have no contact with the other three boys who were reportedly
involved in the attacks, they are banned from visiting the former Nazi
concentration camp at Ebensee where the attacks occurred, and one boy must
undergo counselling.

The public prosecutor did not object to the courts decision to release the
boys, so the decision is lewgally binding.

Three of the six boys in question shot at the Holocaust survivors with
so-called "softguns" and two others joined them in shouting Nazi slogans
at the survivors on 9 May. The two boys released yesterday were put into
preventive detention on 13 May.

The news of the boys release came on the heels of a report about neo-Nazi
behaviour at a Salzburg discotheque.

The Austrian media reported yesterday that some people had occasionally
been seen there wearing neo-Nazi uniforms and displaying other neo-Nazi
regalia.

The media reported today that Upper Austrian police were investigating an
alleged neo-Nazi event in Gmunden district.

The police said they were looking for a German band that had played the
music of Third Reich songs sung by some 100 people at a district night
spot.

The proprietor reportedly told police the neo-Nazis had arrived on the
scene after midnight and claimed he had called police a short time later.
Residents of nearby apartments called police to complain about noise
coming from the establishment.

By the time the police had arrived at the establishment, however, most
guests had already left and most of those remaining there were too drunk
to be questioned.

The police found a small trailer the German band had used and gave their
German counterparts its license number in the hope they can track band
members down.

Meanwhile, police in Vcklamarkt in Upper Austrias Vcklabruck district have
said the defacement of a monument to Nazi euthanasia victims in the town
last Friday night had evidently not been the work of right-wing extremists
since a number of other instances of vandalism not linked to political
motives had also occurred in the town that night.

(source: Austrian Times)