CLASH WITH FASCISTS IN STREETS OF VIENNA
VIENNA -- For the first time since the end of Nazi rule in 1945, Austrian fascists were in the streets here March 351 in a mob of 1,000, out to break up an antifascist demonstration. Armed with knives, tear-gas, stink bombs, bicycle chains and even explosives, they wounded several demonstrators and killed a 67-year-old workingclass functionary, Ernst Kirchweger, a member of the Communist party of Austria,
The origin of the street battle is significant. For some time antifascist groups have been campaigning for the ouster of one Professor Taras Boradajkewycz from the Vienna College for World Trade. The 62-year-old professor, a self-avowed former member of the Nazi's, the SA and the SS, has been openly propagandizing for the Nazi regime, sounding many fascist and anti-Semitic themes in his classes.
The Social Christian minister of education procrastinated,. The Austrian Resistance Movement, an antifascist organization with a following of left-socialist trade unionists, Socialist youth, Communist workers and radical~minded students, organized several protest demonstrations. The March 31 rally was the second one. Between 4,000 and 5,000 people participated in it.
A neofascist student organization, inspired by former members of the SA and SS, decided to organize a counterdemonstration under excuse of defending "academic freedom." The real nature of this assemblage was clear from the slogans alone. For the first time in twenty years, the streets of Vienna echoed to shouts of "Death to the Jews," and “puppets of the Jews," Some of the armed neo-Nazis even shouted, "Long live Auschwitz!" [one of Hitler's extermination camps].
The police did little, many of the officers indicating sympathy with the neofascists. oo
The murder of Ernst Kirchweger, the first working-class militant to be killed by Austrian fascists since the Nazi regime was toppled, aroused deep feelings among the Austrian working class.
The left wing of the Socialist party has called for protest strikes and for the formation of an antifascist workers' self-defense organization. These proposals are now being discussed in the plants and in the Socialist party.
So high did indignation mount that the reformist leadership of the Austrian Trade Union Federation proclaimed a general strike April 5 to protest the murder of Ernst Kirchweger. They showed their stripe, however, by limiting the strike to five minutes!
The reformist leadership of the Austrian Social Democracy is caught between the pressure of workers in favor of energetic reaction against the neofascists, and some miserable electoral maneuvers, Jonas, the Social Democratic mayor of Vienna, is scheduled to run against a Social Christian candidate in the coming presidential elections. The electoral strength of both parties is about the same, The brain trust in the Socialist party headquarters fear that the neofascists might vote against Jonas if stiff action should be taken against them. The Social Christians, moreover, are. openly wooing the neo-Nazis. Fascist Professor Boradajkewycz, who triggered off the present crisis, boasts of protection in the "highest circles" of the Social Christian party.
On the other hand, feelings are running so high among the workers that a vigorous campaign in favor of self-defense guards in the factories and working-class districts would prove attractive to many Catholic workers, drawing them toward the Socialists.
But such a course is not to be expected from the classcollaborationist, ultra-reformist leaders of the present Austrian Socialist party. In comparison to them, even the centrist Austro- Marxist leaders of the pre-1934 Socialist party look like ultralefts. ~
BEN