Nazi defender defiant

last updated 8 January 2015

Vienna

An Austrian legislator has reneged on his promise to resign after expressing sympathy for the Nazis. In a speech last month, Siegfried Kampl said that Austrian Nazis had been “brutally persecuted” after the war even though they had little choice but to join the party after Germany annexed Austria. Those who deserted the Nazis out of principle, he said, had as good as killed their own countrymen. Even Kampl’s own party, the far-right Alliance for Austria’s Future, demanded that he apologize, and initially he agreed to resign. But this week, he said he would take up the rotating presidency of the upper house, which is scheduled to fall to him in July. Other parties have threatened a walkout. “We cannot tolerate somebody like this as president of the Bundesrat,” said Alexander Van der Bellen of the Green Party.