Euro 2008: With The Tabloid Nazi Hunters In Austria
OTHER than football, paedos and telly, the tabloids’ next favourite story is of Nazis.
True enough the Taliban hold away, being as they are the modern equivalent of the German mob. But while they can create the “Talibin” rubbish police, Nazis give tabloids so much for flexibility and scope: Bin Nazis; Traffic Nazis, Page 3 Nazis and so on.
Today the Sun leads with: “We find wanted Nazi at Euro 2008.”
That old man is Milivoj Asner, “no ordinary supporter welcoming his national side Croatia to his adopted Austrian town”.
Finding an old Nazi in Austria is just matter of pointing at any local who looks to be in their 80s or older and screaming “Der weiße Engel”.
But the Sun thinks it has got its man – the man who lives under the cunning alias of Dr Georg Aschner in the Croatian part of Klagenfurt. He’s the man one local says is “an SS man”. He’s the man the police and Nazi hunters know lives there but the Austrians say is too poorly to stand trial.
Anyone may suppose the Sun’s man at the footy is just bored and looking for something other to write about than Romania’s injury list. But the Sun says he and it are doing great things.
The paper contacts the Jerusalem-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which hunts Nazis worldwide. It speaks with a Dr Efraim Zuroff, who says: “The Sun found him healthy enough to stroll happily round his home town for hours. This is highly significant.”
Hurrah for the Sun, for finding an unrepentant old Nazi living in Austria. Now to find a bear toileting in the woods, a huge sausage in the diner and a Swiss man full of civic pride…
June 16th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
What aspect of this event does your reporter dislike? The finding of a Nazi murderer by the Sun or just the finding of a Nazi murderer?
The Nazi’s should be hounded to their graves for the evil they let loose on Europe. And when they are all dead and gone, we should be catching the murderers from Bosnia, Serbia, Rwanda and everywhere else that atrocities have occurred.
There is no excuse for inhumane behaviour in this time. Our pitiful and selective policing of the globe should be improved, not abandoned.
Your reporter needs to look further than their own limited concerns.
Mods and Admin
Ian, you are new to the site, but we discuss on the news reports.
June 16th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
the comment is actually on the Sun’s habit of making a crusade out of something which is actually not that newsworthy or surprising and the way it is reported to make out that the Sun is the nazi-hunting newspaper of choice and bringer of justice.
no-one (in their right mind) would disagree with the metering out of justice to these people, wherever they are found and however old they are now.