Simon Wiesenthal Prize winner Karl Pfeifer died

President of the National Council Wolfgang Sobotka praised him as a “persistent fighter for democracy and against hatred of Jews”. piperwho was expelled from Austria in 1938, has been regularly visiting local schools since the early 2000s and telling schoolchildren about his fate.

“Whether old or new anti-Semitism, whether from the right or left, whether at home or abroad, but above all in Austria: Karl piper remained inflexible, he saw and named the anti-Semitism – against all odds,” Sobotka was quoted as saying in a broadcast.

piper was born on August 22, 1928 in Baden near Vienna and grew up there. Ten years later he had to flee Austria – shortly after Adolf Hitler had announced the country’s “annexation” to the Third Reich. piper fled to Hungary and joined the “Hashomer Hatzair” in Budapest, a socialist-Zionist youth group. In 1942, the 14-year-old and 49 other Jewish children were brought to safety in Israel.

In 1951 he returned to Austria. “According to Austrian law, I was not a returnee,” reported piper In 2018, when he received the Decoration of Honor in Gold for services to the Republic of Austria. “Asked how I felt here, I answered honestly: ‘The Nazis are much too loud for my taste’.”

piper worked in Austria as a journalist and fought against anti-Semitism and for democracy. Later he made himself available as a contemporary witness, mainly in schools, and told the children and young people about his life as a persecuted child and his life abroad. Last year he accepted the Simon Wiesenthal Prize in Parliament.