SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Historians dispute the claim by a British journalist that Nazi fanatics attending a party near the Austro-Hungarian border in March 1945 killed 200 Hungarian Jews as an "additional entertainment" laid on by the hosts. The massacre did happen, though, and the circumstances surrounding it remain unclear.
A row has broken out among historians about one of the most spectacular Nazi crimes committed in Austria. On the night of March 24 to March 25, 1945, some 200 Hungarian Jews were murdered in the Austrian town of Rechnitz near the Austro-Hungarian border. The bodies of the victims still haven't been found.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper last week published an essay by British journalist David Litchfield in which he claims that several guests at a party held by Countess Margit von Batthyany, born Thyssen-Bornemisza, in Schloss Rechnitz castle were offered the chance to murder the Jews as an "additional entertainment" laid on by local Nazi party chief Franz Podezin. The guests accepted the offer, Litchfield wrote. Mass Murder as Party Entertainment? (more)
Mark Alexander
