The Austrian government is trying to explain itself out of the embarrassment of having owned a castle that contains a bell with praise for Hitler, whose name is inscribed on the bell that has been rung for 80 years.
The government recently sold the castle, located in a rural farm area, and now the bell’s history has become known.
The castle and bell are located in the small village of Wolfpassing and was occupied by Soviet Red Army soldiers after the downfall of Hitler, but no one said a word about the bell’s praise of Hitler, which is a violation of Austrian law.
Beside Hitler’s name being inscribed on the bell, an inscription calls him “the unifier and Fuehrer of all Germans” who freed Austria “from the yoke of suppression by foreign elements and brought it home into the Great-German Reich.”
for good measure, there is a swastika on the bell, which Austrian officials either have overlooked for decades or simply looked away.
The village mayor claims that the local residents did not know about the bill’s inscription, a story that is a bit hard to swallow.
Now, everyone knows about following the sale of the castle, which could implicate the government for spreading Nazi ideology.
Economics Minister Reinhold Mitterlehner said that the government did know about the bell when it sold the castle not aware of the inscription, and the new owner has not said what he plans to do with the bell.