Gottfried Waldhäusl, a Freedom Party cabinet minister in one of Austria’s state governments, wants to ban the sale of kosher meat to anyone except observant Jews who agree to be registered and placed on a list.
The very idea of creating lists of Jews, especially in a German-speaking country, probably sounds like a horrific idea. But you may be thinking to yourself, hey, it’s not that bad, because the idea of this proposal is just to improve animal welfare. How terrible can that be?
Sorry to point this out, but it can be pretty terrible.
The Nazi regime, from the earliest days of its ascendancy in Germany, used this exact same animal welfare-related excuse in order to harass Jews in their religious observances and to demonize them in public propaganda.
“The Eternal Jew,” an infamous 1940 Nazi propaganda film, tried to stoke public anger at Jews using a wide variety of arguments. One of those arguments, which begins just over 56 minutes into the the video below (use discretion in viewing), is that the Jewish kosher slaughter of animals is just animal cruelty disguised in the trappings of religion.
“European science has long acknowledged the torturous character of this kind of slaughter,” the narrator says in German. “In 1892, the people voted to ban it in Switzerland. Jewish law has no love and respect for animals in the Germanic sense. It’s even forbidden that the suffering animal be put out of its misery.”
As the segment progresses, the film shows cows and sheep being slaughtered in what is represented as a Jewish butcher shop, in an attempt to portray the killing as something especially cruel and painful for the animals.
The film goes on to praise the Nazi Party, and Adolf Hitler in particular, for moving to abolish animal cruelty by banning kosher ritual slaughter of animals.
“The National Socialist movement has opposed this cruel torture of defenseless animals since its earliest days. In nearly all provincial elections, and in the parliament, we move to forbid this form of slaughter. But the entire Jew-controlled press called our stand disgraceful.”
“Right after the Führer took power, a law enacted April 21, 1933, forbade the Jewish form of slaughter. It decreed that all warm-blooded animals be given anaesthetic before slaughter.”
The chilling line at the end of the segment translates thus: “And just as with ritual slaughter, National Socialist Germany has made a clean sweep of all Jewry. Jewish thinking and Jewish blood will never again pollute the German nation.”
So, then: Is this really company that Lower Austria’s government wants to keep?
