What nonsense it is to look into the Austrian soul to explain these crimes, just because chance brings them to our attention not long after the Kampusch case, is shown above all by the contradictions in the argument. On the one hand friends, neighbours and agencies are criticised for failing to suspect anything earlier. How typical of this country, the accusation runs, that people looked the other way, took no interest in other people's business and lacked the courage to report anything strange to the authorities. Yet at the same time Austrians are said to be a race of snitches (as shown under the Nazi regime), ready to shop their neighbours the first chance they get. Both cannot be right.
This is my free translation of part of Peter Michael Lingens's piece in Profil magazine, criticising those, like Charles E. Ritterband of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung who've linked the infamous events at Amstetten somehow with Austrian guilt related to the Holocaust. To do so is stupid, says Lingens: to two are simply unrelated. Yes, near Amstetten there used to be an annex of Mauthausen concentration camp; but then concentration camps stood near other places in Austria, too.
I agree completely. I see no sense whatever in making the connection.
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