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U.S. Military Court Starts Trial of Eight Austrians Charged with Attacking Dp Camps

September 9, 1947
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Eight persons went on trial here today before an American military court, charged with leading a riot against a camp of displaced Jews in the town of Bad Ischl.

The riots took place on Aug. 20, when a crowd of 300 persons, after demonstrating before the Mayor’s office in protest against the reduced milk rations, proceeded to the Hotel Kreuz, where the displaced Jews have been housed by the camp authorities, and attacked the building with stones, shouting “Hang the Jews, Kill the Jews.” Austrian policemen witnessed the anti-Jewish demonstration, but did not interfere until the American police dispersed the crowd and arrested its leaders.

The Wiener Kurier, a Vienna daily newspaper, today charges that Engelbert Posetto, a former member of the Nazi party since 1938, but now a member of the Communist Party in Austria, was chiefly responsible for the attack. A spokesman for the Jewish Central Committee in the American zone in Austria is quoted in the paper as allegedly stating that among the demonstrators was a woman who shouted: “Jewish pigs-Beil Stalin.”

On the other hand, the official organ of the Red Army in Vienna claims that the people arrested by the American military police were “proven anti-Fascists, who protested primarily the delay of food deliveries.”

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