The “Buergermeister Zeitung”, the organ of the Federation of Christian Socialist Mayors in Austria, publishes an editorial, in which it sets out the position of the Christian Socialist Party on the Jewish question.
Never in human memory, it says, was Judaism so offensive and so successfully offensive as in these years, and never has the Christian population been so put on the defensive as to-day. It was a Jew, Victor Adler, who put the axe to the monarchy and expelled a dynasty which had ruled gloriously for eight centuries. It was a Jew, Julius Deutsch, who turned the army into a Party guard. It was a Jew, Otto Bauer, who in his Linz programme sought to convert Austria into a Soviet State, and it is a Jew, Hugo Breitner, who has plunged Vlenna into calamity. To-day this Jew is commanding an army of officials who are seizing the last possessions of the Christian population, which is showing amazing forbearance at the way it is being treated by these representatives of “oppressed” Jewry.
But we do not want to do injustice to the Jewish population, the paper goes on. The Jewish population is not responsible for the misdeeds of some Jews. The Jews who dominate our city to-day and commit such terrible injustice against their fellow citizens, oppress Jew and Christian alike.
But the Jewish population bears some of the blame, the paper proceeds, because they have given their votes as a closed body almost to Messrs. Deutsch, Bauer, Breitner and Company, and have placed their press, practically without exception, at the service of these State disruptive elements. They have given the Socialist rulers of Vienna 120,000 Jewish votes.
We must tell these Jewish voters that they have themselves to thank, and not the Christian Socialists, if the antisemitic movement to-day threatens again to take control in Vienna.
120,000 votes are not to be sneezed at. It is these 120,000 votes that ensure to the Social Democratics their hegemony over Vienna, and thus over the whole of Austria.
The Christian Socialist Party repudiates every form of race antisemitism, the paper declares. It knows that there are a great number of Jews who are animated with a sense of good citizenship and who stand for the maintenance of the State and collaborate in the great upbuilding work of our fatherland. All those whose will lies in that direction are welcome in our ranks.
Our enemies stand all to the Left. And their fight against the liberty of the citizen, against the institution of the family, and against religion, is conducted equally against Christian and Jew.
When Austrian Jewry understands not only to demand citizen rights, but also to fulfil citizen duties, there will never be any enmity between Christians and Jews. The great mistake of Jewry, and perhaps their tragedy lies in their naive conception of wanting to fight antisemitism, at the same time that this small minority places itself completely at the service of anti-State social democracy.
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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.
