VIENNA (JTA) – Austria will allow the descendants of Holocaust victims to receive citizenship beginning Sept. 1, the country’s embassy in Israel announced Sunday.
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Before an amendment to Austria’s citizenship law ratified last September, only survivors were entitled to receive citizenship, and then only if they left Austria due to Nazi persecution before May 1945.
Ynet reports that tens of thousands of Israelis will now be eligible for Austrian citizenship under the new rule. The application process will be free.
The amendment is “in line with Austria’s ongoing endeavour for reconciliation with all those who suffered under the totalitarian Nazi-regime in Austria,” Austria’s government website states.
Normally Austrians lose their Austrian citizenship when they apply for citizenship in another country.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has forged very close ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the past few years.
No thank you. Austria, you deserve the low birth rate and the rising Muslim population. Western Europe is finished.
Again the holocaust.
We never seem to be able to stop agonizing over it.
For some Jews it has, unfortunately (for lack of true Torah centered Jewish identity), become an identity badge.
There is one huge problem here; the holocaust is always treated as a Jewish issue.
It is not!
It is a Christian issue!
Yes, I know, six million innocent men women and children (including members of my family) were brutally murdered in cold blood.
But that is not the real issue.
The real issue is that each and every one of these inhuman murderers was a Christian.
Born and baptized as a Christian, educated in a Christian educational system, brought up in a Christian society. Almost all denominations were represented. And in those days, most people took their Christianity seriously.
Instead of remembering the victims we should be asking what it is about Christianity that turned so many normal human beings into vicious animals.
If we really want it to happen “never again” we should concern ourselves with what made it happen in the first place.
Austria, you can keep you citizenship; you are no different than your German cousins, as your country welcomed the Nazis with open arms.
BEHEMO GOMER,I was liberated in Buchenwald on 4-11-45, block 66. I davened sometimes in Buchenwald and have raised shomer shabbes children