Olaf vs. Frontex

European Diary, 13.1.2021: The news has hit home. The EU’s anti-fraud agency (Olaf) is investigating the EU border agency Frontex.

For many months, Croatian border guards have been trampling EU law and forcibly driving refugees back to Bosnia at the EU’s external border. They do this with the applause of some governments in Europe. Hungary and Austria are at the forefront of covering up this open violation of the law, or approving it when covering it up no longer works in the face of so much evidence. Finally, Austrian border officials are not squeamish when it comes to covering their ears at the Slovenian border when refugees ask for asylum – and instead forcibly push them back into Slovenia, from where they are deported to the Croats, who then dump them at the Bosnian border. In return, the EU then pays Bosnia money to take care of these illegally deported refugees. In Bosnia, this money ends up in invisible channels – but obviously not in refugee care. For example, hundreds of refugees were allowed to spend the end of the year outside in the freezing cold because the improvised Lipa tent camp still had no electricity, no water and no heating and was therefore closed down by the International Organization for Migration. Since then, not much has happened. Except what is now called “on-site assistance”: a few new, unheated tents, with no water and no electricity. 2000 refugees are now squatting in the forest, mostly under plastic sheets. In sub-zero temperatures. Many of the cases are well documented.
To this day, the European Court of Human Rights does not dare to address this ongoing breach of law by EU member states and aspirants. But at least Frontex, the border protection agency run by the EU itself, is now under investigation. For a long time, countries like Hungary, Poland and Austria placed high hopes in Frontex. Then Orban and Kurz realized that Frontex, too, must abide by laws. And Frontex fell out of favor.
But Frontex Director Fabrice Leggeri apparently wanted to save his reputation in Budapest, Warsaw and Vienna in 2020. So Frontex is now, as has been known for months, in the eastern Mediterranean involved in illegal refoulements off the Greek coast. And there are other things that seem to be going wrong at the agency, from intimidation of employees who have concerns to irregularities in tenders. Whether the ongoing investigations will have any consequences remains to be seen.

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/ermittlungen-gegen-eu-grenzschutzbehoerde-frontex-17142763.html

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/lipa-lager-bosnien-101.html

https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000121752241/berichte-ueber-illegale-pushbacks-von-migranten-an-oesterreichischer-grenze

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

“We are the new Jews”

European Diary, 4.12.2020: One of the leading figures and closest confidants with whom Viktor Orban has been bringing Hungarian cultural creators and institutions into line for years is Szilard Demeter, the director of the Petöfi Literature Museum in Budapest – and a member of numerous committees in which decisions are made on the allocation of grants to the literary and music industry. Szilard did not become known for his rather moderately successful literary and musical attempts, but rather for his marked right-wing slogans and threats of violence. Now he has also gone a little over the top, even for Orban’s best friends, the Israeli government.

George Soros, the Hungarian Holocaust survivor and former investment banker who has been the most popular target of anti-Semitic campaigns by the Hungarian government for years, made Europe his “gas chamber”, according to Szilard in a commentary on the Internet portal origo.hu last Saturday. “Poison gas flows from the capsule of a multicultural open society, which is deadly to the European way of life.” “The liberal Führer, and his liber-Aryan army” would try to erase the Christian and national identity of the European peoples. “We are the new Jews,” writes Demeter, referring to Poland and Hungary, and the intention of the European Union to punish violations of the rule of law in the future, which Poland and Hungary want to prevent by blocking the entire EU budget.
Demeter, who calls himself a “fanatical Orbanist”, has half-heartedly backed down after strong protests by the Jewish community in Hungary, numerous organizations and yes, even the Israeli embassy. Of course, there is no question of resignation or dismissal. After all, the fact that Soros allegedly wants to “flood” Europe with Muslims is the core of Orban’s daily propaganda, in which he is advised by close confidants of the Israeli head of government, Netanyahu. The fact that Szilard has made a few mistakes with the text modules here will not really hinder his career in Hungary.

“We are the new Jews,” wasn’t it with these words that the chairman of an Austrian right-wing party in 2012 complained about being insulted on the way to the ball of fraternity members. “It was like the Reichskristallnacht”. Only five years later the man was vice chancellor. Szilard Demeter must have a brilliant career ahead of him. Well, at least for a while.

“Abendland”

European Diary, 13.10.2020: Tomorrow evening Micha Brumlik (Berlin) will speak in our program about the new discourse on “Christian-Jewish Occident”. To get into the right mood André Heller will sing his unrhymed chanson about “Occident”.
André Heller’s Jewish father fled from the National Socialists and lived after 1945 mainly in Paris. Thus Heller also grew up with French citizenship before he became a chansonnier in Vienna.
In 1967 he was one of the founders of the pop channel Ö3 and presented the program Musicbox. His political commitment was always a balancing act. As a “Jew living in Vienna,” he criticized Kreisky for his compromising attitude toward old Nazis and anti-Semites, and Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, even though some critics accused him of “promoting” anti-Semitism. André Heller has not challenged such poisonous absurdities. He has remained as politically awake and critical as ever. When he spoke in the Austrian Parliament on 12 March 2018 on the occasion of 80 years of “Anschluss” in the Austrian Parliament, he ended his speech with a look at the new populism of the icy cold that had entered Austrian politics – and has not been overcome to this day.

“Allow me to tell you another strange thing about my life. For decades I thought I was something better than others. Wiser, more talented, more amusing, entitled to pride. I was arrogant, narcissistic, constantly judging others, and it didn’t do me any good until one day I was looking around me in a London Underground car. There were sitting and standing very different people with different skin colors and I heard different languages: In a kind of lightning bolt into my consciousness, I realized that each and every one of these women and men, old and young, hopeful and desperate, is also myself and that German, English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic or Swahili is not our real mother tongue, but the world mother tongue is and should be the compassion. It enables us to recognize ourselves in each other and to be intimately and lovingly connected with them and to take this realization into account in all our thoughts and actions.

Late time, twilight
hour that carries hope, sadness and ashes
Take a breath, be lonely
Autumn of thoughts and last refuge for me
Occident, Occident ‘I respect and despise you
Occident!

Occident
Not my tiredness
But the longing for dreams makes me look for sleep
The disturbing possibility of the transformations of my figure
Into other characters and locations
In the Von der Vogelweide
Cervantes, Appollinaire and James Joyce
Children’s crusades, funeral pyres, guillotines, colonies
The infamy, in fornicators on the Holy See
Expeditions to the edge of consciousness
Bankruptcy of good intentions
Congresses of the cynical laughing masters
Marc Aurel’s “Astronomy of contemplation”.
The storm baptisms Vasco da Gamas
Leonardo’s mirror writing
Gaudi’s anarchy of buildings
In Pablo Ruiz Picasso
Who grabbed the wishes by the tail
The Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto
The Great Progroms of Armenia and Spain
Percival, Hamlet, Woyzeck, Raskolnikov
The flowers of evil
De Sade, Hanswurst and the man without qualities (“Mann ohne Eigenschaften”)

“like a ship bringing the plague to Europe”?

European Diary, 3.10.2020: In Catania, the trial against the Italian ex-Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini for deprivation of liberty begins today with the hearing of the radical right-wing leader, who is now in opposition. In July 2019, Salvini had refused a ship of the Italian coast guard entry into the port of Augusta in Sicily. The ship carried 131 boat refugees rescued from maritime distress. The competent court in Catania considered this a crime of deprivation of liberty, punishable by a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. In February, a majority of the Roman Senate voted to lift Salvini’s immunity – when the coalition between Salvini’s right-wing Lega Nord and the Five-Star Movement was already history. Salvini, who crashed in the polls in the wake of the Corona crisis, is in any case using the process for his permanent election campaign. For days he has been mobilizing in Sicily with flaming speeches and Verdi arias from the tape. “Vincerò” – “I will win”. He had only defended the borders and the honor of Italy by taking 130 people hostage in his right-wing extremist politics. A conviction of Salvini is nevertheless considered unlikely – and so the trial will probably also help him to work on his comeback.

European Diary, 3.10.2019: The captain of the sea rescue vessel Sea-Watch 3, Carola Rackete, today gave a speech to the European Parliament in Brussels, at a hearing of the Committee on Home Affairs – and received a standing ovation from part of the MEPs. The Austrian Broadcast ORF reported in detail about this unusual event on the same day:

“‘I was received like a ship bringing the plague to Europe,’ Rackete said on Thursday in the Parliament’s Committee on Internal Affairs. ‘It was hard to be an EU citizen these days. I was ashamed.’

Rackete’s hearing took place on the sixth anniversary of the Lampedusa refugee tragedy in which 366 people died. While the deputies commemorated the tragedy with a minute’s silence, Rackete stressed that not much has changed since then.

The German activist vividly described her experiences as a rescuer at sea, for example when her ship hit a wreck around which bodies were floating. Some had held each other in their arms as they died, ‘the bodies inseparably connected’. She also saw three children ‘holding the body of a baby in their arms. Then some sang for this baby and rocked it as if it was still alive.

None of these experiences were as bad as the ‘frustration’ of spending 70 days with rescued people on the Sea-Watch 3 in the Mediterranean ‘and explaining to people that Europe didn’t want them, Europe, the symbol of human rights’. In this context, Rackete once again defended her decision to go to the port of Lampedusa. This was not a provocation’, said Rackete. ‘I should have done it much earlier’, said Rackete, referring to the protection of human life. ‘Yes, I would do it again any time. People die every day, of course I would do it again,’ she later replied to a corresponding question.

When she landed in Lampedusa against the will of the Italian government, she received ‘a lot of unwanted attention’, Rackete told the MPs. But where were you when we called for help through all possible channels, where were you when we asked for a safe place? If we are really concerned about torture in Libya, Europe must stop cooperating with the Libyan coast guard,’ Rackete demanded, to the applause of the MEPs.

Six years have passed and instead of avoiding similar tragedies, the EU has externalised its responsibilities and delegated them to Libya in violation of international law. But there is ‘hope’, namely the actions of civil society organizations.

Rackete called for a radical change in the way migration is handled. A reform of Dublin is ‘long overdue’, she said, and humanitarian corridors and safe and legal routes to Europe are needed. A landing of rescued persons must be in accordance with the law and must not be left to ad hoc negotiations.

‘After my arrest, there was great interest in sea rescue. I hope that this will be reflected in the deeds. I hope for real progress and not that it will become even more difficult for me and many organizations,’ said Rackete. ‘We must be careful about what is negotiated in the coming weeks and make sure that our demands are enforced,’ she urged MEPs.

At the hearing, representatives of Frontex, the EU Commission, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency and Italian coast guard captain Andrea Tassara made it clear that the rescue of refugees in the Mediterranean should not be criminalized. However, differences emerged during the debate. Conservative members of parliament insisted on putting a stop to the smugglers. Frontex director Fabrice Leggeri repeatedly avoided the question of whether he considers Libya a safe third country.

The Director for Migration of the EU Commission, Michael Shotter, pointed out that since June more than 1,000 people have already been able to land and have been distributed to other member states and Norway in ad hoc actions. ‘We now need a reliable and continuous search and rescue operation instead of ad hoc actions,’ said Shotter. It is therefore ‘important’ that after the Malta agreement, other member states participate and show ‘solidarity’.

The chairman of the interior committee, Spanish Socialist Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar, also insisted on clear rules that prevent the criminalization of sea rescue. The committee will draft a resolution on this issue, which will be adopted at the next plenary session of the European Parliament.

MEPs from right-wing populist parties, such as the Slovakian Milan Uhrik, who himself suggested that Rackete himself should leave for Africa, countered this. I can only identify with Salvini, who says you should be in prison,’ said the member of parliament for the ‘People’s Party – Our Slovakia’. The German right-wing populist Nicolas Fest followed up by asking Rackete if she considers it part of her mission to ‘endanger the lives of Europeans by infiltrating torturers and terrorists’. In the debate, ÖVP delegation leader Karoline Edtstadler voiced little veiled criticism of the activities of the sea rescue workers. I simply wonder how we are going to end this business if the rescue is still the ticket to Europe,” said the former state secretary on the question of the ‘pull factor’ of rescue operations. The EU should not allow itself to be ‘divided into good and bad states’, Edtstadler demanded the establishment of a system ‘that does not play into the hands of the wrong people’.

SPÖ MEP Bettina Vollath demanded an end to the criminalization of sea rescue workers. It can never and under no circumstances be criminal to help people in need, but it is a moral and legal obligation,” she emphasized in a statement referring to current figures of the United Nations, according to which this year already more than 1,000 people have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea and since the beginning of 2014 more than 15,000 people. ‘Legal entry routes, fast and legally secure procedures and local help are needed to combat the causes of flight’, she stressed.

Monika Vana, head of the Austrian delegation of the Greens, wants to launch an EU sea rescue programme. ‘The Mediterranean is a mass grave for those in need of protection, that is a disgrace for the entire EU’, Vana told ORF.at. She is in favor of legal and safe entry into the EU. The trade of smugglers must be stopped and safe escape routes must be created. The EU-Council has to agree to the Frontex-Fund ‘Search and Rescue’, which was proposed the day before yesterday by the budget committee of the European Parliament, demanded Vana.

According to MEP Erik Marquardt of the German Greens, ‘humanitarian aid became part of a political game’: ‘The EU should send ships to the Mediterranean to save people. This is not only a responsibility of the Commission, but of each member state. It is not only the people who are drowning in the Mediterranean, but also our European values’, said Marquardt.” (Source: https://orf.at/stories/3139594/)

A little more is a little less less…

European Diary, 18.9.2020: It works after all. Or at least a little bit. To quote Claude Juncker: “A little more would be a little less less”.

Germany now apparently wants to take in an additional 1553 refugees from the burnt down Moria camp. For a long time, there was no movement between Minister of the Interior Seehofer and the 150 German cities and municipalities (including Berlin) that demanded to be allowed to take in refugees. Again and again there was talk that Germany should not go it alone. After the catastrophe on Lesbos, Chancellor Merkel, Minister of the Interior Seehofer and representatives of the SPD have now agreed on a different approach. The more than 1500 refugees from Moria are said to comprise a total of 408 families, among them already recognized refugees who were stuck on Lesbos despite their asylum status due to Greek asylum policy and the still upheld “Dublin rules”.

In reality, of course, the problem is much greater, because the conditions in the Greek “reception camps” on the islands were and are not only catastrophic on Lesbos, but as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on September 16, also on Chios, Leros, Kos and last but not least on Samos. In the local camp Vathy there are also almost 7000 people housed. About ten times its capacity. The fact that the possible repatriation of migrants whose asylum applications had been rejected – as agreed in the so-called EU-Turkey deal – did not come into effect was, as the FAZ dryly notes, not primarily due to Turkey. Instead Greece did not even build up the resources on the islands to be able to properly examine the asylum applications.

Thus a fatal development took its course, which primarily increased the suffering of the refugees. The FAZ reports alarming conditions. A woman, who has been there for six months with her husband and her small child, tells of her rescue from the sea by the Greek coast guard – “but above all of the torture afterwards: of a housing container with beds without mattresses, of queuing for several hours every day for meals in heat, rain or cold. Of an impassive police force that does not intervene when the weaker ones are beaten or robbed. By a single doctor for several thousand people – and above all by the uncertainty of how long all this will remain their own living environment”. In the camp, frustration grows, competition between different groups whose origins are not always compatible – after all, they come from war zones – and of course desperation breaks out violently, in demonstrations and protests against the guards, and mostly against each other. How could it be otherwise? The inhabitants of the nearby Greek towns also demonstrate, and they too no longer always remain peaceful.

The mayors of the islands demand in vain government solidarity on the mainland, Greece demands, mostly in vain, solidarity with Europe, and even a hardliner like Horst Seehofer meanwhile bursts his collar when he thinks of Austria, and explains in the Spiegel interview: “I am disappointed by the attitude of our Austrian neighbors not to participate in the reception of a manageable number of people in need of protection from Greece. (…) If we do nothing, we will strengthen the political fringes”. Well, the political fringes have long since reached the Vienna Chancellery.

Repatriation-Patronage

European Diary, 23.9.2020: The EU Commission makes a new attempt to coordinate the asylum policies of the different member states. In view of the attitude of some states, this already borders on the courage of desperation. The German Broadcast Deutsche Welle reports undaunted: “The fire in the refugee camp Moria and the inhumane conditions on Lesbos give the debate ‘new momentum’ EU officials in Brussels say. The head of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has announced that the old system, also known as “Dublin rules”, is to be replaced by something new. An obligation for EU states to accept refugees or asylum seekers will probably not be included, because many member states would simply refuse to do so.

Meanwhile, Germany has already relativized its new figure of 1500 a little bit. This figure does not only refer to people from Moria, but also from various other Greek islands. There the same inhuman conditions prevail that led to the explosion on Lesbos anyhow. But at least this new allowance remains an additional admission to those 150 children and teenagers from Moria, as announced earlier. France is also taking in 150 people, Italy 300. The Netherlands on the other hand is cheating. They announced the admission of 100 people from Moria – and reduce their UN contingent by this number. This is a smart way to lie to yourself and the world. Finland is taking in 12 young people. Well then.

But the EU Commission now wants to talk about a new “migration pact”. The old Dublin system is to be overcome, announces EU Commissioner Schinas, reports Deutsche Welle: “In the future the member states could choose whether they want to accept asylum seekers or rather help with the repatriation and deportation of rejected asylum seekers. Commission President von der Leyen follows suit. This system should be obligatory. States like Hungary, Poland (or Austria), which do not participate in the reception of refugees, should then organize their repatriation in the future. And in doing so they should adhere to all international regulations. Something for which these increasingly authoritarian and illiberally governed states are generally well known. But the EU Commission has now apparently switched to sarcasm, too, and calls its new proposal “repatriation sponsorships”, or “patronage”. No, looking at the calendar does not clear this up either. Today is not April 1.

“An Aura of Ghosts”

European Diary, 11.9.2020: Thousands of refugees from the Moria camp on Lesbos are now living on the streets in the dirt. Germany and France, and several other European countries want to take in 400 children and young people. Austria is willing to send some blankets and tents. The day before yesterday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Schallenberg added his very own tone to the Austrian concert of shame.

Jovial as always, in chosen words, he confirms to interviewer Armin Wolff on Austrian TV that the misery on the Greek islands has its purpose: deterrence. And he says that this is something that we do not want to change in the future either. “It is precisely this calm and objectivity” that gives his appearance, as Irene Brickner writes in the Standard, an “aura of the ghostly and unspeakable”. He talks like a good-humored, nice, friendly gentleman who is completely at peace with himself. But he talks about hostage-taking, child abuse, coercion, and bodily injury resulting in death. Just about those things with which he and his colleagues are currently inscribing themselves in the history of violence in Europe. Armin Wolff had no chance to break open this “armour of official mentality and refugee deterrence”, said Brickner. Meanwhile, other European politicians are slowly bursting their collars. Germany’s conservative Minister of the Interior Seehofer “is surprised”. Jan Asselborn, Luxembourg’s foreign minister, is speaking plainly: “The whole of Europe has been taken in by Kurz’ talk that all that is needed is to close the borders so that the refugee problem can be solved.” Even the Kronen-Zeitung thinks that this is now going too far. And it quotes the Austrian chancellor with downright disgust: “Why are the children on the Greek islands closer to us than those in Venezuela?” A telling question…

“Help on the spot”

European Diary, 25.9.2020: Austrian television reports from Lesbos. Late hour. Afterwards one cannot sleep well.

The nation’s best paid bouncer, Austrian Minister of the Interior Karl Nehammer lands on Greek territory with the fattest plane he could rent from the Russians. He brings along some 55 tons of “relief supplies” and police officers. He stands wide-legged in front of the camera and speaks of “help on the spot”. We already know this. And he now also makes it very clear what he means by that.

It’s not about helping the people who have been imprisoned on the island for months, some of them for years. It’s about helping the Greek governement to continue to treat them badly, as a deterrent. With the Austrian tents a new camp is to be built, seven kilometers away, far from any other settlement, even more controllable, even more deterrent than Moria already was. But at least for the beginning a bit more orderly and clean. Until the press is gone and the people can be left alone again in the dirt, which will settle down by itself in the fall.

The people who are now forced into the new camp with “gentle pressure”, as they say, have to drag their few possessions, strapped on pallets, boxes or boards, along the road for miles and miles to the new camp. The children just pull the smaller boxes, the adults the big ones. These pictures, too, will not be forgotten so quickly. At least now we know how Austria sees “help on the spot”.

That which prevents us from sleeping should indeed look and feel exactly like this. As an Austrian (Greek, Hungarian…) politician you have to bring along a pathological sadism to do your job.

Meanwhile, the provincial governor of the islands explains to the Austrian journalists, how one views the situation in Lesbos: “We thank Austria for its efforts, but we would have had our own tents, we wouldn’t have needed this help at all.” What they are still waiting for on the islands is that Europe will finally distribute the refugees among the member states. Well, the Greek government could of course take them to the mainland, but on this issue the Greek government and the European coalition of the unwilling are in agreement.

Chancellor Kurz has been calling for such camps on Greek islands for years. And Austria’s former Minister of the Interior, Mr. Kickl of the right extremist FPÖ, who was so talented in creating new language, also had an inventive name for them: “Concentrating Camps”. Just say that Austria and many other EU countries have learned nothing from history.

Postscript on September 30, 2020: Today the news report the dry fact, that the “55 tons of supply” never arrived on Lesbos, but were stored somewhere in Greece on the mainland. The Greek government does not know what to do with the 400 tents Mr. Nehammer brought along last week. As they said before: “Tents we have…”

The Gate to Hell

European Diary, 9.9.2020: Today completely without countenance and diplomacy. Naked and stunned. The Moria camp no longer exists. A major fire has destroyed the refugee camp on Lesbos, where thousands of people have been imprisoned for years as hostages of European politics. For several months 13,000 people have been living there in shelters that can accommodate only a fraction of them. Under inhuman conditions, hopelessly overcrowded, without sanitation, poorly kept alive by NGOs and the United Nations, which in return have to face insults from the criminals who rule us today. Austria pays something for the guarding of these people by the Greek police.

13.000 people, among them children, sick people, were kept there like cattle, as a deterrent against all those who possibly still believed in Europe’s “values” (be it moral, be it material).

For months NGOs have been warning that at some point Corona will break out in the camp. Largely isolated from the rest of the world, Moria was spared from Corona for a while. But a week ago there was the first serious case and numerous infections. Fear spread, of infections and even more so of the “quarantine”, because nobody is allowed to leave the camp anymore. Nevertheless, some managed to flee to the surrounding hills. The refugees are even more afraid of being shipped to newly planned, hermetic prison camps somewhere on Lesbos or Chios, and of losing the rest of their self-determination and dignity.

As a result, clashes broke out between different groups of refugees. At some point, the accumulated desperation of many months of hopelessness and torture turned into sheer panic.

The populists of Europe finally managed to explode the situation. The camp burned down. There are countless potential dangers in the shelters crammed with people. But there is talk of arson, and nobody would be surprised. If you have no other choice, the last resort is to set fire to the roof over your prison cell.

Austria’s Minister of the Interior uses the catastrophe for further agitation: “Migrants who are prepared to use violence have no right to asylum in Europe.” This makes one fear the worst. The cynicism of the last months and years is probably followed by even worse cynicism. This is the bare contempt for humanity. How can such a person still look at himself in the mirror in the morning? But perhaps the Nehammers and Kurz and how they are all called have taken down their mirrors in the meantime.

“Symbolic politics”

European Diary, 12.9.2020: The Austrian chancellor posts a video message. This has the undeniable advantage for him that he no longer has to put up with uncomfortable questions from rebellious journalists. Lying is even easier that way.
After all, more refugees cannot come here every year, he says. But in fact they have been getting fewer and fewer for years. In 2019 there were as few asylum applications as hardly ever since 2000.
Once again he reiterates his refusal to accept unaccompanied children or anyone else from the destroyed camp Moria. And in doing so he demonstrates a stubborn version of “morality”. “This inhuman system of 2015, I cannot reconcile with my conscience.” What “system” is he talking about? What conscience?
Instead, he says, “help is given on the spot, so that a decent supply is guaranteed.”
In the meantime, one had the opportunity to do this for years. And Austria has not lifted a finger. Because the conditions in Moria were supposed to serve as a deterrent, and therefore could not be inhumane enough. The demand for more humanitarian commitment on the part of Austria “on the ground” has so far interested Sebastian Kurz only in rhetoric, both as Foreign Minister and even more so as Federal Chancellor. Almost nothing has happened. Now he is calling for a “holistic approach”. What does he mean by this? He rejects “symbolic politics”, by which he obviously means the modest (shameful?) attempts by Germany, France and some other European states (including Switzerland) to free at least a few hundred children from the inferno on Lesbos.
This is the same man who looks dutifully serious at commemoration ceremonies for the victims of the Shoah when the Talmud is quoted: “Whoever saves a human life saves the whole world.”
I don’t know if that is really true either. But every child rescued from the chaos on Lesbos will at least feel that way.
Thousands of refugees are still camping out in the open. But even for Salzburg’s Governor Haslauer, the 13,000 refugees are just a collective arsonist and blackmailer who set fire to his house “so that (his) neighbor(s) will have to take him in”. And who therefore should not be helped.
This sick logic is currently widespread not only in Austria’s government, but above all in social networks. Does it still make sense to argue against it in any way? With such helpless sentences like:
Most of the people there didn’t set fire to anything at all, only a few of them did. And wasn’t it customary in Austria to rescue children from a house, even if one of the inhabitants of the house was perhaps an arsonist? But the people in Moria did not live in a “house” anyhow, but were locked into a camp against their will. And they were “kept” there under conditions that everyone knew would eventually lead to an explosion of despair. In the end, Corona came to the camp and the naked panic broke out.
How will people even talk to each other when such simple truths no longer matter? But that is exactly the point. There is no point in talking to each other here. That’s why there is a video message.

Hungary’s enemy?

European Diary, 13.9.2020: Hungary’s Prime Minister Orban and the country’s media, now largely controlled by him, are apparently worried that with the aged George Soros they could at some point lose their favorite enemy, the Jewish world conspiracy to flood Europe with Muslim migrants. The Central European University Orban has also successfully expelled from Budapest (to Vienna), at least its regular teaching activities.

Now Orban has discovered the conspirator behind the conspirator, the Austrian migration expert and pro-European activist Gerald Knaus.

His small think tank ESI (European Stability Initiative) critically observes corruption and anti-democratic tendencies in many European countries, restrictions of press freedom or the treatment of minorities. And of course also the worrying developments in Hungary.

The major Hungarian daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet now dedicates an entire six-part series of reports to Gerald Knaus, beginning on the front page with a portrait of Gerald Knaus and George Soros side by side. And colorful infographics that reveal their secret power and network. An unprecedented hate campaign.

The facts are quite banal. Gerald Knaus was one of those who in 2015 advised German and European policy-makers to reach an agreement with Turkey on the support of refugees on Turkish soil, but who at the same time repeatedly called for a fundamental examination of the causes of flight, especially the situation in Africa, in order to offer people a legal, but also controllable way to migrate to Europe, instead of just “offering” the illegal (and very often letal) trafficking routes to them. Gerald Knaus has also repeatedly and sharply criticized the way the EU deals with refugees on its own periphery, not least on the Greek islands. He has now dedicated a book to his observations and political advice, which will be published in October (“Which borders do we need?”) and which he will present in November in Hohenems and Vienna, among other places.

Whether the Hungarian campaign is connected with the fact that Knaus is currently (all the more so because of the events in Moria) again a sought-after interview partner in Germany and Austria, or whether the concerted media action of Viktor Orban’s vassals was prepared for this hunt anyway? You need to know Hungarian to penetrate this jungle of hate speech.

Even the Hungarian television was involved in the smear campaign: On september 12th HIR TV dedicated an own TV discussion to Gerald Knaus, with four sinister “experts” discussing how to fight “Hungary’s enemy” for an hour.

Heinrich and Helene Brunner

Portrait of Heinrich Brunner, about 1830, Jewish Museum Hohenems, Carlo Alberto Brunner Estate Portrait of Helene Brunner, about 1830, Jewish Museum Hohenems, Carlo Alberto Brunner Estate

Heinrich Brunner (1784 – 1867) was born as Henle Wolf in Hohenems. When Jews became obliged to adopt a surname, he took, as did his brother Arnold, the name of Brunner. He became a butcher and cattle dealer like his father and married Helene Marx (1785-1855) of Reckendorf in Bavaria. In accordance with marital divisions of labor common in the early 19^th century, Heinrich managed all matters of business outside the home, while Helene was in charge of overseeing the household and the children’s education in line with the religious commandments, but also of representing her husband during his probably frequent extended periods of absence. Heinrich and Helene Brunner had nine children; in the early 1830s, four of them moved to Trieste for good where they founded the Brunners’ Triestine business empire. He probably gave up his occupation as butcher and opened himself a colonial goods store in Trieste in 1836, yet continued living in Hohenems. Here, he was active as council member of the Jewish Community, as chairman of the commission for the poor, and as board director of the burial society of the Hohenems Jewish Community. Being the first “Brunner,” he assumes the role of patriarch on the genealogical tree, which was likely commissioned by his grandson Lucian.

Genealogical tree of the Brunner family. From the estate of Lucian Brunner, loan of Francesca Brunner-Kennedy, Virginia

Jacob, Marco and Wilhelm Brunner

Within a brief time span, four sons of Heinrich and Helene Brunner, née Marx, have left Hohenems to seek their fortunes in Trieste. Jacob, Marco, and Wilhelm

—the latter two not yet twenty—establish a trade business in Trieste around 1832, which offers textiles purchased in St. Gallen, so-called “Swiss goods.” In 1835, Carlo (Hirsch) will follow them as well. In their joint letter to them of November 20, 1833, Heinrich tells his sons that the butcher’s shop was going well and that he, however, does not know where his sons might get hold of red calfskin, presumably for selling in Trieste. On the back page, mother Helene and sister Henriette report news from daily life. Helene urges her son Wilhelm to learn something and not to drowse. The Brunner brothers in Trieste frequently travel to St. Gallen. Thus, personal contact within the family is maintained as well. In 1835, Marco returns to devote himself entirely to purchase activities in St. Gallen and eventually establish a bank, from which UBS would ultimately emerge.

Helene and Henriette Brunner to Jacob, Marco and Wilhelm Brunner in Trieste, 20.11.1833. Jewish Museum Hohenems, Carlo Alberto Brunner Estate

Heinrich Brunner to Jacob, Marco and Wilhelm Brunner in Trieste, 20.11.1833

Helene and Henriette Brunner to Jacob, Marco and Wilhelm Brunner in Triest, 20.11.1833

Carlo Alberto Brunner

The Jewish Museum Hohenems owes its collections of Carlo Alberto Brunner (1933-2014) to his children who, after his passing, have decided to permanently loan the museum part of his estate. Carlo Alberto Brunner grew up in Trieste as the first son of Leone Brunner and Maria Teresa Brunner (née Clerici). He survived the Nazi period with his family on their compound in Forcoli, Tuscany. From the German invasion onward until the late 1960s, the family had to face substantial economic losses. After the sale of the property in Forcoli, Carlo Alberto moved to Israel and converted back to Judaism. He first lived on a religious and then on a socialist kibbutz. In 1974, he married Nurit Feuer and went on living with his family in an apartment in Giv’atayim, a suburb of Tel Aviv, surrounded by memorabilia from his Hohenems and Triestine family, oil paintings from the early 19^th century and from Trieste, heirlooms and memories. Carlo Alberto Brunner also left behind a book manuscript, Il Fondo del Ghetto, in which he contemplates the stations of his life and his family history as mirrored in the great political ideas, historic events, and nationalistic catastrophes of the 20^th century.

Carlo Alberto Brunner: Il Fondo del Ghetto (The Bottom of the Ghetto), Manuscript. Jewish Museum Hohenems

Carlo Alberto Brunner, Il Fondo del Ghetto (The Bottom of the Ghetto). Childhood under German occupation

Carlo Alberto Brunner, Il Fondo del Ghetto (The Bottom of the Ghetto). Israel and ethnic nation states

Angiola Sartorio

Angiola Elise Sartorio (1903-1995) was the daughter of Julie Bonn and the Italian painter Giulio Aristide Sartorio. Her grandmother Elise Bonn, née Brunner, a sister of the “Triestine brothers” of the first generation, had married into the Frankfurt banking family Bonn. Following her parents’ separation and years spent in England and Sweden, Angiola Sartorio moved back to Germany where she became acquainted with the ideas of modern dance and entered the company of Kurt Jooss, a student of the influential dance theoretician Rudolf von Laban, to eventually embark on a remarkable career as choreographer and dancer. In 1933, she created a choreography for Max Reinhardt’s Italian stage production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Florence. She rejected, however, Reinhardt’s invitation to accompany him to the USA. She had just opened a dance school of her own in Florence where numerous dancers fleeing from Germany and Austria had found work starting in 1933. In 1939, Angiola Sartorio decided to flee to the USA herself, first to New York, then to Santa Barbara where she continued teaching dance and choreography. She remained professionally active until the end of her life and took a stand for minorities and civil rights.