He was a contemporary witness to the Holocaust. He was a warning against anti-Semitism, Germanism, National Socialism and right-wing extremism. Even in his old age, he spoke at public appearances and in schools about how, as a 13-year-old, he witnessed the Nazis’ rise to power in Vienna. In March 2014, he wrote in a “Comment from others” in the STANDARD in memory of March 1938: “Since then, I have been overcome with unease when I see excited crowds who enthusiastically listen to the inflammatory speeches of some politicians, who today not only look for someone to blame for the difficulties they have caused, but also find them. Back then it was the Jews, today it is the foreigners, the asylum seekers and some others like Roma and Sinti.”
