‘Aktive Arbeitslose Austria’ demand an immediate stop of the building project and the clearings!
(Vienna/Graz, 10th October 2017) Despite numerous protests of the civilian society and the victim associations like the Mauthausen committee1, the black-blue town government of Graz wants to concrete over the mute witnesses of the past at all costs. Instead of exploring systematically the grounds of the camp and of making the atrocities of the NS era in Graz finally clear as a coherent whole, the Graz holding has already begun to fill up the selective excavations. Residential building town councillor of the right wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) Mario Eustaccio even wants to build “social buildings” on the area contaminated by Nazi atrocities and to cover the dark past of the Nazi stronghold Graz in this way.
Historians suspect that there are still victims buried in the bomb craters. The NS camp Liebenau namely was an intermediate stop for thousands of Jews from Hungary in the last days of the war on the death march to the concentration camp Mauthausen.
The NS forced labour in Graz is not only played down by the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) but also by the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) which pretends to be Christian. The catholic church in Graz with bishop Wilhelm Krautwaschl in charge and other established institutions and dignitaries remain silent again. The old non-culture of keeping silent is indefatigably continued in the “town of national uprising”.
It is implausible that money is missing for the reappraisal of the past which is long overdue, when on the other hand at least 160 million are fed into an unprofitable water power station2 (which precisely in winter – when electricity is needed most urgently – would only produce approximately 4 MW of electrical power) including the central storage channel. Beside the NS camp the green lung in the midst of the fine dust stronghold Graz shall be sustainably destroyed and the population of legally protected animal species shall be exterminated.
Therefore ‘Aktive Arbeitslose Austria’ start an online petition against this non-culture of active forgetting in the “town of human rights Graz” as well as UNESCO world cultural heritage and demand an immediate stop of the building project and the clearings, so that the dark chapter of the NS dictatorship with more than two dozens of forced labour camps is finally reappraised. Alternatives like wind energy and solar energy are much cheaper and neither Austria nor Europe need new power stations3. They don’t destroy and split the town of Graz that much like power station and channel do. In the first place only the concrete and construction lobby profit and should very well pave the way for “modern residential building”.
Probably to keep the investment fund of the Australian investment bank Maquarie, which describes itself willingly as a green investor – in a good mood, subsidy merry-go-rounds which probably contravene European Union law are constructed – as the elected representative of the National Assembly Werner Kogler shows.
The hurry and the brutal force with which the NS camp and its victims should be build over, is in any case very suspicious and unique in Austria.
1 http://www.mkoe.at/es-ist-zeit-im-sinne-der-historischen-verantwortung-oesterreichs-zu-handeln
2 https://www.trend.at/wirtschaft/studie-teure-plaene-ausbau-wasserkraft-murkraftwerk-7985079
3 http://diepresse.com/home/wirtschaft/energie/3816155/EControl_Oesterreich-braucht-nicht-mehr-Kraftwerke
https://www.e-control.at/presse/aktuelle-meldungen/kapazitaetsmaerkte-nicht-notwendig
http://diepresse.com/home/wirtschaft/energie/4985751/Zu-viel-Strom_Europa-soll-Kraftwerke-abschalten