Austria: Outrage on election eve amid funeral with Nazi song

The singing of a song with a Nazi past at a funeral in Vienna, Austria, on Friday has sparked outrage, as Austria braces for parliamentary elections where the far-right is projected to make big gains.

Three well-known members of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) attended the funeral where "Wenn alle untreu werden" (When all become unfaithful) was sung.

Video appears to show FPÖ politicians

Austrian daily Der Standard reported on Saturday that FPÖ politicians, Martin Graf, Harald Stefan and Norbert Nemeth were at the funeral of a former FPÖ politician.

It was unclear whether they had sung along to the song, which dates back to 1814 but was glorified during the Nazi era.

Der Standard published a video it had received showing people attending a funeral at a cemetery, and standing near a grave singing Max von Schenkendorf's song.

The words include a line with a phrase which translates "want to preach and speak of the holy German Reich."

The song was adopted and glorified by the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) as a "song of loyalty." The Nazi resistance sang the song too.

The SS was a paramilitary organization that assisted Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's rise to power and helped carry out the deliberate murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Austria's Jewish Students' Union said it had reported the incident to prosecutors and called it an "alarm signal for Austria." 

Incident condemned on eve of Austrian elections

The incident comes on the eve of Austria's national elections, for which the far-right leads opinion polls.

However, parties across the political landscape have condemned the video.

"The FPÖ is once again proving that it is right-wing extremist," Justice Minister Alma Zadic, a member of the Green Party, said.

The far-right populist party is again showing "its radicalized face," Chancellor Karl Nehammer's conservative Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) said on its website.

The Social Democrats (SPÖ) and liberal NEOS also expressed similar sentiments.

German news agency DPA reported that FPÖ representatives shown in the video did not respond when contacted.

The party condemned the responses to the video, saying people were "politically abusing the video of a private person's funeral, over which the FPÖ had no influence whatsoever."

kb/rmt (dpa, AFP)