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Anti-semitic Clashes at Vienna Soccer Game: Chancellor Mares Anniversary of Pogroms

November 12, 1948
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Several clashes occurred at a soccer game here yesterday between the Hakoah and Vienna Sparta teams when Spectators shouted anti-Semitic insults a the Jewish team and Jewish members of the audience. The members of the team protested to the city’s police headquarters because policemen assigned to keep order at the game failed to intervene to halt the anti-Semites.

Earlier, Chancellor Leopold Figl, addressing a Jewish Community meeting commemorating the tenth anniversary of the murder and deportation of thousands of the city’s Jews and the destruction of many of its synagogues, declared: “All Austria bows her head with me in this hour in sorrow but also in shame at the thought of what you suffered ten years ago.” He added that “the ruins of so many destroyed temples and the memory of so many mercilessly and vilely destroyed lives are a burden even today to many of the victims.”

The Chancellor promised that the government would not halt half-way in its promised restitution program. Kurt Lewin, special Israeli representative here, also addressed the meeting which was attended by 2,000 Jews. Among the non-Jewish notables who attended the ceremony were Cabinet ministers, a representative of the city’s police, the mayor and a Catholic Church dignitary.

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