Karl Pfeifer
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Karl Pfeifer (born 22 August 1928 in Baden bei Wien, near Vienna) is an Austrian journalist.
Life
Karl Pfeifer and his parents fled Austria in 1938 to Hungary, there he joined the socialistic-Zionist youth organization HaschomerHatzair in 1940. Before the German occupation of Hungary in the Second World War in January 1943, he successfully escaped as one of 50 children after an adventurous way to Palestine. There he lived in a kibbutz, served from 1946 in the elite troop Palmach and, after the foundation of Israel, he served in the Israeli army until 1950. In 1951, he returned to Austria. From 1982 to 1995, he was editor of the "Gemeinde", the official organ of the Israelitecult-community Vienna.
In this function he wrote in an article in 1995, that the political scientist Werner Pfeifenberger had used "Nazi tones" in the yearbook of the freedom party academy. Karl Pfeifer said that Pfeifenberger had played the Nazi regime down and accused the Jews for being responsible for Hitler's war in 1933. Afterwards Pfeifer was sued by Pfeifenberger and acquitted in two instances. When in 2000, the Vienna public prosecutor brought charges of re-Nazi activity against Pfeifenberger, he committed suicide. The editor of the right magazine ZurZeit, Andreas Mölzer, called Pfeifer then in a press release to its subscribers, to be part of a "hunting party" which had Pfeifenberger driven into suicide – The "Jewish journalist" had released the "legal avalanche against Pfeifenberger". In consequence, Pfeifer sued for compensation in the Austrian courts. On 15 November 2007, Pfeifer got under article 8 of the European Court of Human Rights right adjudicated – at the same time, the Republic of Austria was convicted to pay € 5,000 compensation for the failure of the courts.
From the early 1990s, Pfeifer worked as a Vienna correspondent for Israeli radio and as a freelance journalist for the London monthly anti-fascist magazine Searchlight and the Budapest weekly newspaper Hetek. Pfeifer also belongs to the board of trustees of the documentation archive of Austrian resistance.
In 2008, Mary Kreutzer produced a documentary for the Society for Critical Research on Antisemitism about his life entitled Zwischen allen Stühlen.Lebenswege des Journalisten Karl Pfeifer.[1] It was shown in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Israel. In 2011, the film was shown in the presence of Karl Pfeifer at the Austrian Institute of the Minnesota University in Minneapolis and at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York.
Merits
- 2003: Joseph Samuel Bloch Medal from the Action against anti-Semitismin Austria
- 2018 Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria in Gold
- 2022 won Simon Wiesenthal award
References
- ^ "English (Zwischen Allen Stühlen - Lebenswege des Journalisten Karl Pfeifer)". Archived from the original on 2010-04-30. Retrieved 2012-03-11.
External links
- Articles with short description
- Short description with empty Wikidata description
- BLP articles lacking sources from March 2012
- All BLP articles lacking sources
- AC with 0 elements
- 1928 births
- Living people
- Austrian Jews
- Jewish emigrants from Austria to Mandatory Palestine after the Anschluss
- Austrian expatriates in Hungary
- Austrian expatriates in Israel
- 2023 deaths