Austrian Independent: “Anger as WWII ‘killer’ dies in Austria”
(h/t: Sparta)
Austria has been branded as a “paradise for Nazis” after it emerged that an alleged war criminal deceased in a care home in Carinthia.
A spokesman for a Caritas retirement centre in Klagenfurt confirmed newspaper reports claiming that Milivoj Asner passed away today (Mon). He said the Croat perished aged 98 in the institution last week.
Asner is suspected of being behind the deportation of hundreds of Serbs, Roma and members of the Jewish community in Croatia’s Ustasa movement during World War Two (WWII). Asner changed his name to Georg Aschner after fleeing to Austria when the Communists took over his homeland in 1945. He received the Austrian citizenship the next year.
Asner lived in Carinthian capital Klagenfurt to his death. Austrian prosecutors opened a case against him due to occurrences in WWII in 2004 before Croatia demanded his extradition one year later. However, Asner was spared a trial due to his mental condition.
Juridical decision-makers in Austria asked a German expert to examine the suspected war criminal in 2009 after they were accused of having acted biased as several expert opinions established by Austrian doctors suggested Asner was not fit for legal procedures.
The debate over how to handle the issue intensified in 2008 when British journalists claimed Asner – who allegedly suffered from dementia – must be strong enough to go to court after spotting him at a fan zone in Klagenfurt during the European Football Championship.
Now Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s office in Jerusalem, Israel, has claimed Austria was a “paradise for Nazis.”
“His decisive role in the killing of hundreds of Jewish people, Serbians and Roma in the Slavonian city of Prozega is evident,” the historian said today (Mon) after being informed that Asner has died.
Who are the REAL Nazis?
Journalists these days stretch a very long way to confront conservative and counterjihadist European politicians with far-fetched accusations of somehow being soft on Nazism (e.g., see Strache – Le Pen meeting hit by Hitler controversy).
Left-wing bloggers do the same. To put it bluntly, they go out and look for some flimsy excuse to call anybody a “Nazi” who doesn’t agree with them. In the blogosphere, this type of logical fallacy has been given its own name: Reductio ad Hitlerium. As a reaction to the tiresome frequency of such arguments, Godwin’s Law holds that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1 (100%).”
The now-infamous Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs used that technique to backstab the entire counterjihad movement, which he once pretended to support, and he still uses it against conservative politicians and commentators, counterjihadists, and Tea Party spokesmen in the US. (See Charles Johnson hits bottom, digs, Charles Johnson hits bottom, digs (Part 2), and The Return of the Vlaams Belang.)
…and who were their victims?
But what have those journalists and bloggers to say when an actual Nazi comes to light – a Nazi from the days when the Third Reich made common cause with Muslims in persecuting and slaughtering Jews, Roma, and Christian Serbs?
From those Europeans who live nearby, or who could safely visit places where I cannot: How about a retrospective on the victims? How about showing the places where they once lived, and telling us whatever is still known about their lives that were so tragically interrupted?
Just askin’.
