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Hanns Kammerstaetter/AP
A bell with Adolf Hitler’s name on it in the castle of Wolfpassing, Austria.
The Austrian government is scrambling to explain how it failed to notice a castle it recently sold holds a bell honoring Adolf Hitler.
The swastika-embossed bell, which tolls every hour in rural Wolfpassing village, dates to 1939 and was mounted by Nazis who supported Hitler’s annexation of Austria one year earlier.
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An inscription on the bell describes Hitler as “the unifier and Fuhrer of all Germans” and says he freed the “Ostmark” — Nazi jargon for Austria — “from the yoke of suppression by foreign elements and brought it home into the Great German Reich.”
Despite the Nazi sympathies on the bell, no one complained until the government sold the castle — with all its historical trappings — to Tobias Hufnagl, who will not say what he plans to do with it.
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Now, officials are scrambling for explanations of why the bell apparently evaded notice for so long. The town is about 60 miles east of Vienna.
AP
The Wolfpassing bell describes Hitler as ‘the unifier and Fuehrer of all Germans” and says he freed the “Ostmark” — Nazi jargon for Austria — “from the yoke of suppression by foreign elements and brought it home into the Great-German Reich.’
Some even argue that the sale of the castle amounts to propagating Nazi values, which is illegal in Austria. The country is particularly sensitive to any reminder of its Nazi past.
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“The best thing would be if the bell disappeared and was buried somewhere,” said Raimund Fastenbauer, a senior official of Vienna’s Jewish community.
Government officials in charge of real estate insist the sale was legal, and that the bell in the belfry was an integral component of the castle.
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With News Wire Services
