Survivors of Hitler’s concentration camps were among the 1,000 participants in a parade demonstration yesterday against the acquittal in Austria earlier this year of Franz Murer, the Nazi chief in the Vilna Ghetto. He was acquitted in Graz last June of the murder of 17 Jews in the ghetto.
The marchers, demanding the re-trial of Murer, carried black flags and wore yellow badges with a Mogen Dovid and a legend: “The murderer of the Jews of the Vilna Ghetto to the gallows.” Placards carried by the marchers denounced the “shameful acquittal” of the former Nazi gauleiter.
The procession was headed by a committee of former Vilna residents. A deputation was received by the Parliament’s presidium to which they presented a petition citing criticism of the acquittal by most of Austria’s newspapers, which had urged a re-trial as well as calling of new key witnesses.
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