Two Austrian citizens who played a Hitler speech over the public address system of a passenger train have been exempt from trial, but will have to follow a course against hatred and discrimination.
The Vienna Prosecutor’s Office has decided not to press charges against the two young men. Instead, they have been forced to follow a course in the “dialogue instead of hate” program, which deals with issues of discrimination and could also include a visit to concentration camps, public radio and television ORF reports today.
In May 2023, the two young people manipulated the public address system of a passenger train that covered the route between Vienna and the city of Bregenz to play fragments of a historical speech by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
After being identified thanks to the images of a security camera, the two were interrogated by the agency for the protection of the Constitution and the fight against terrorism, as suspected of having violated the Austrian law that punishes the denial or trivialization of the Jewish Holocaust and other crimes of Nazism.
The ÖBB, the state railway company, apologized at the time to Austria’s Jewish community and assured that anti-Semitism had no place on Austrian trains.
