Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra admits links with Nazis

March 12th, 2013

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (AFP Photo / Dieter Nagl)

The world famous Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra has admitted that many of its musicians were Nazi party members in the 1930s and 40s and drove out Jewish members who were sent to death camps.

The Vienna Philharmonic is best known for its New Year’s
Concert, a Strauss Waltz extravaganza, which is broadcast to 50
million people in 80 countries. Its image is closely associated
with the 18th century Vienna of Hayden, Beethoven and Mozart and is
one of the Austrian capitals biggest tourist attractions.

What has only just been revealed is its shadier Nazi-associated
past.

Thus, the famous New Year concert originated in 1939 to be used
by the Nazis as a propaganda instrument, while of the orchestra’s
123 members in 1942, 60 belonged to the Nazi party and two were
members of the SS.

The orchestra has also published online a report on who received
its rings of honor and medals, which traditionally had been given
to artists but during Nazi rule were given to high ranking
officials and military leaders.

The list included Baldur von Schirach, the Nazi governor of
Vienna, who was awarded the ring in 1942. Schirach ordered the
deportation of tens of thousands of Jews to concentration camps and
was sentenced to 20 years in jail during the Nuremburg trials after
the war.

In one of the articles posted on the orchestra’s website on
Sunday it was revealed by the historian Oliver Rathkolb that a
replacement ring was given to Schirach after he was released from
prison in 1967.

Clemens Hellsberg, the Philharmonic’s current chairman, told
Reuters that the orchestra has not yet made a decision on whether
to revoke awards handed out during the Nazi period.

Details of 13 musicians who were driven out of the orchestra for
their Jewish origin or relations, five of whom died in
concentration camps, were also published on the website for the
first time.

The conductor, Joseph Kripps, whose father was Jewish, was
forced to leave the orchestra and work in a food factory but was
welcomed back in 1945 at the end of the war.

Bernadette Mayrhofer, an independent historian from the
University of Vienna, believes that the ostracism of Jewish
musicians had begun even before the 1938 Anschluss with Germany,
under a harsh period of authoritarian rule in Austria known as
Austrofascism.

“It was known whether someone had Jewish roots or a Jewish
wife,” she told Reuters.

The unfortunate history of the orchestra, has only surfaced
gradually, as until the recent findings were published online, the
secrets of the Philharmonic’s archives have only been seen
selectively by a handful of commissioned historians.

The Vienna Philharmonic has said it is not obliged to give
public access to its archives, since it is a private
organization.

A history of the Vienna Philharmonic, ‘Democracy of Kings’,
published in 1992 by the now chairman Hellsberg, did not mention
many of the uncomfortable facts now coming to light on the
website.

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (AFP Photo / Dieter Nagl)

Hellsberg, talking at the preview of a documentary by Austrian
state broadcaster ORF, about the orchestra’s Nazi era history, said
that the orchestra had been quietly working through its history for
decades and now needed to give a proper account of
itself.

Harald Walser, an Austrian Greens member of parliament, one of
the Philharmonic’s most vocal critics, said he welcomed the
orchestra’s move but wanted it to go further.

“It’s a step in the right direction. But we’re still a long
way from having adequate access to the archives,” he said.

Fitz Truempi, one of the historians commissioned by the
orchestra to write the articles on its website, said it took him
three years to get access to the archives to research an earlier
book, Politicized Orchestra, a study of the Vienna and Berlin
Philharmonics under National Socialism, published in 2011.

Truempi thinks the orchestra has come to a decision that it’s
long held policy of withholding information about its past is no
longer protecting but harming its image.

“For a long time, they tried to maintain strict control over
their brand but, in the end, the political pressure became such
that it was the best solution to open up,” he concludes.

However, in December last year Walser accused the orchestra, of
destroying important documents from the World War Two period.

The Philharmonic has also been criticized for being too
homogenous. An influential classical music writer, Norman Lebrecht,
penned an opinion piece for Bloomberg in January that the orchestra
had only six female members and no Asians even through a third of
the students from Vienna’s University of Music are Asian.

Source Article from http://rt.com/news/nazi-austria-orchestra-jews-169/