Eric Frey
By Eric Frey
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Opinion Austria’s Past Cannot Be Buried With Kurt Waldheim
For two decades, Kurt Waldheim was the most ignominious name associated with modern Austria and a permanent black spot on its international reputation. But even though the former Austrian president and U.N. secretary general, who died last week at age 88, never showed true remorse for lying about his past, he inadvertently turned out to…
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Opinion A Danger Burns From the Ashes of Communism
Poland and Russia are now experiencing a backlash against the liberal and democratic values that flourished after the fall of communism nearly two decades ago. Not surprisingly, the targets of these forces in both countries are often Jewish. While the threats in Poland and Russia are quite different, both places offer plenty of reason to…
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Opinion C’est l’Economie, Stupide
When Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative frontrunner in the French presidential elections, goes into the runoff with his socialist rival Ségolène Royal on May 6, he can count on strong support from the largest Jewish community in Western Europe. Many of France’s 600,000 Jews like Sarkozy’s outspoken (and somewhat un-French) support for Israel, but some are…
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Opinion Admit That the Boycott of Hamas Has Been a Failure
For more than a year, the European Union and its member states toed the harsh Israeli line in boycotting the Hamas-led Palestinian government. But since the unity government of Fatah and Hamas was sworn in earlier this month, the Europeans have parted ways with Jerusalem and are seeking direct contacts with the Palestinian Authority —…
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Opinion Speak Loudly and Carry a Relatively Small Stick
To those still hoping for a peaceful way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the current standoff gives reason to despair. Tehran continues to develop its uranium-enrichment program at full speed, a key step toward developing an atomic bomb. The president of the Islamic Republic, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, remains defiant as ever. And the United…
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Opinion Laughing About Hitler All the Way to the Bank
Jews are known to poke fun at themselves and at their worst enemies alike. But for some of his co-religionists, movie director Dani Levy’s last joke went too far. His comedy about Adolf Hitler earned negative reviews in the German-speaking media, and generated indignation among Jewish community leaders and some well-known intellectuals. The result was…
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Opinion Let Irving and His Ilk Deny The Holocaust
Last February, when an Austrian judge sentenced British revisionist historian David Irving to three years in prison for denying the existence of Nazi gas chambers back in 1989, a wide range of commentators criticized the verdict and Austria’s prohibition statute on which it was based. Even American historian Deborah Lipstadt, who had won a high-profile…
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Opinion The Lost Spirit of Christmas Past
As a young boy growing up in officially Catholic Austria, December was a time to realize what it meant to be Jewish. In the birthplace of “Silent Night,” Christmas was a deeply religious experience from which even non-religious Jews consciously excluded themselves. Christmas shopping was a subdued affair, while advent wreaths and nativity scenes abounded….
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