Bill SprichtJust another WordPress weblog

I saw a captioned photo of a plaque that is on a building somewhere here in Vienna, remembering or commemorating or celebrating or whatever the fact that Josef Stalin lived in the building in 1913.

Vienna has long been “red” (Rot Wien) and remains so today. The spectacularly gargantuan city housing block known as “Karl Marx Hof” is a good example. Okay, I can live with that. Marx didn’t govern a country and kill millions of its inhabitants. Stalin did.

The Left everywhere has always treated Stalin differently than his contemporary and fellow mass-murderer Adolf Hitler. We won’t see this plaque anytime soon: “The young artist Adolf Hitler lived in this building in 1907.” And such a plaque could be repeated at many locations in the city. Hitler lived here from 1906 to 1913, providing that historically wonderful one year of overlap with Stalin. Two of Viennas finer residents! But the one murderer — the Austrian one — is absolutely taboo. Well, except when he makes occasional appearances next to the current President of the United States in banners carried by Austrian anti-war demonstrators.

Related posts:

1. Swiss Life
2. Discussion with a Hungarian
3. Dinner with Wolfgang Welsch
4. Do I sense a bit of Schadenfreude?
5. Pre- and Post-Nationalism in Austria