Posts on Facebook

Police officer shared Holocaust denial for years

A now-retired police officer apparently shared Facebook posts denying the Holocaust and other conspiracy theories for many years - even while he was still in active service. His contacts included numerous FPÖ politicians as well as the former Chief of Staff of the Austrian Armed Forces, Robert Brieger.

This was reported by the "Standard" newspaper on Saturday with reference to the "Stop the Right" platform, which had discovered the relevant internet activities. According to the report, the police officer had been sharing and posting racist and anti-EU content under his real name since 2015, including links to relevant sites and neo-Nazi narratives.

Postings shared by Holocaust deniers
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is equated with Hitler, the Greens with National Socialists and the murder of millions of Jews is denied. For example, the man shares a post about the Rhine meadow camps. These were prison camps that the Allies ran along the Rhine for German prisoners of war from April 1945.

On a website that he shares as a post, it is claimed that German corpses were dug up there and passed off as Jewish corpses in order to manipulate the number of victims of the Holocaust. A lie that is often spread in neo-Nazi circles. In 2016, he shared an article on a radical right-wing website entitled "Adolf Hitler did not have Jews gassed, but Jews gassed non-Jews en masse!" was the headline.

FPÖ members among Facebook contacts
His 3700 Facebook contacts include numerous politicians from the FPÖ, NPD and supporters of "Der Dritte Weg", as well as police officers and members of the Austrian army. Under another post about the Rhine meadow camp with the headline "A concealed chapter of German history", the former Chief of the General Staff and current Chairman of the Military Committee of the European Union, Robert Brieger, commented: "Above all, it is a concealed chapter in the history of the victors." An inquiry from the "Standard" to Brieger's office remained unanswered for the time being.

Ex-employer: "Did not attract negative attention"
An inquiry to his former employer, the Styrian Provincial Police Directorate (LPD), as to whether they were aware of the postings was answered as follows: The "retired officer did not attract any negative attention during his active service either at the South East Styria District Police Command or at the Styrian Provincial Police Directorate". However, the spokesman said that the reputation of the police was also at stake in his retirement.

The public prosecutor's office must first examine the facts of the case, he continued, "if it is then brought to the attention of the LPD, then the service authority must also carry out an internal review". Service law also applies in retirement. In any case, "Stop the Right" will submit a statement of facts.