More than 600 people of a Vienna suburb signed a protest resolution asking for the removal of a transit camp for Jewish emigrants from the Soviet Union, a police spokesman said today. “They are getting pretty angry there,” he said. People living near the camp in the densely populated suburb of Simmering complained that Austrian authorities so far did not announce any date when the camp will be removed.
A Red Cross official said there are no reasons to move the camp. “We discussed the situation in our last meeting, but we saw no reason to take any decisions,” said Dr. Helmut Proksch, head of the Red Cross of Lower Austria.
Neighbors started protest actions when the Jewish camp was moved to a former Simmering children’s home. Vienna Mayor Leopold Gratz reacted by promising to relocate the camp. But the Ministry of Interior did not even answer, so far, the Mayor’s five-point alternate proposals. The Austrian Red Cross, last month, had transferred the transit camp for Jewish emigrants from the Soviet Union without previous announcement from a former army barracks at Woellersdorf, 25 miles south of Vienna, to the Vienna suburb.
The camp is run under the supervision of the Austrian Red Cross which is responsible for the emigrants after Chancellor Bruno Kreisky ruled the closing down of a Jewish Agency camp at Schoenau last year. Police with watchdogs guard the area, but some of the police officers are dissatisfied with their jobs. “We have to work too long and do not even get paid enough,” one police officer said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
