A woman with 10 children who is nicknamed “the Reich mother” and has called for the right to question the historical truth of the Holocaust, is expected to win up to 25% of the vote in Austria’s presidential election next Sunday.Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, is campaigning on an anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, anti-feminist ticket as the political heir to Jörg Haider, the far-right politician who died in 2008. Germany’s Central Council of Jews has described her political ascent as an example of the “terrifying shift to the right” in Europe.
Her husband Horst Rosenkranz, 67, publishes an extremist magazine and raises funds for imprisoned neo-Nazis. He also sometimes speaks at his wife’s Freedom party rallies.
A veteran critic of Austria’s laws criminalising Holocaust deniers, Rosenkranz had to sign a sworn statement that she rejects Nazism. Upon being asked if she believes the Nazis murdered millions of Jews, she gave the evasive answer that freedom of expression meant allowing people to hold “bizarre” opinions.
Challenging Heinz Fischer, 71, the Social Democrat president, she said immigration must be stopped as “wrong and dangerous”. She has also opposed the construction of minarets and attacked nursery schools as “inhumane”.
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Source: Times, Wiki (English)
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