Major Walter Nowotny needs your help!!!

[VonGreim]

Check this out. Its plainly disgusting...

Vienna council shifts Luftwaffe hero from plot of honour to pauper's grave

"It is a sad state of affairs when any war hero of any nation is dishonored by current political posturing. The left wing element in Vienna, Austria is ashamed of it's past and decided to rectify the situation by digging up the graves of dead soldiers and putting them in pauper's graves."



The ashes of a Luftwaffe pilot who shot down more than 250 Allied planes in the Second World War are to be exhumed from a grave of honour in Vienna after the council stripped him of his status as a war hero.

The campaign to remove Major Walter Nowotny's remains from the city's Central Cemetery and move them to a pauper's plot has been led by the grandson of a British RAF pilot who was shot down over Belgium in 1940 and died of his injuries.

David Ellensohn, a Vienna city councillor whose maternal grandfather was RAF acting pilot officer James Gillespie, successfully argued that Major Nowotny - the first fighter pilot in history to bring down 250 enemy aircraft - had been serving the Third Reich and did not deserve his heroic status.

"He was not fighting for this country, for Austria, he was fighting for the Third Reich," said Mr Ellensohn, a Green Party councillor. "If they had won the war, there would be no Austria as such. Therefore, we should not be forced to give special credit to this man."

Major Nowotny, who had shot down 258 enemy aircraft by the time of his death, aged 24, had been awarded the Third Reich's highest military honour, the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, by Hitler himself.

When the major died in 1944 when his fighter crashed in flames, his ashes were buried with his medals in his home town, Vienna, alongside Austrian resistance fighters and Beethoven, Schubert, Johann Strauss and Brahms.

Mr Ellensohn asked: "What did he do that earned him a place alongside those who really earned their places in the cemetery, such as resistance fighters Rosa Jochmann and Paul Speiser?

"He was placed in that section of the graveyard by the Nazis, not by the city of Vienna, and although it has taken 59 years for the city to recognise that he does not deserve to be there, we are pleased that action is finally being taken."

The council's decision has been denounced as "cultural barbarianism" by Johann Herzog, a councillor for the opposition Freedom Party (FP), which has launched an appeal.

Opposition councillors argue that relocating the major's ashes would contravene the war graves welfare law, from 1948, that says war graves - regardless of the nationality of their occupant - must remain undisturbed.

Mr Herzog said: "The necessity to dishonour Nowotny's grave, and therefore his person, almost 60 years after his death, is evidence of a distorted understanding of history and moreover a lack of deference for a fallen soldier. And that's all he was - a soldier.

"He was not a member of the National Socialist Party and he certainly was not a war criminal. If he were, I could understand the removal of his status. In fact, he was respected not just by his own side but by RAF pilots as well."

Sascha Gasthuber, of the far-Right Germania group, said protesters carrying flaming torches to show their contempt for the vote would march against the council's decision. "Nowotny gave his life to make sure the future was worth living in for us and our children. We cannot sit back and let them dishonour his memory like this."

Mr Ellensohn, however, insisted that the plan to move the grave away from the cemetery's section for heroes was perfectly justified. "As far as I am aware, there is no rule in Catholicism that says a grave cannot be moved, not like in Judaism," he said.

Major Nowotny, who joined up when he was 19 following the invasion of Poland, was renowned even among Allied pilots and during the summer of 1943 became a virtual one-man air force in the skies over the Eastern Front. In June 1943 he shot down 41 aircraft, 10 in one day. He crashed on November 8 1944 and was buried with his medals a few days later.

Anyone feel like sending this bastard your peice of mind??

Here's his email address

[email protected]

regards
Jan

[Kurasier]

Hi,
I must say I'm really ashamed of Vienna's government!!

Best Regards
Christoph

[Ian Earl]

email of protest sent!

Bloody disgrace!

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Utterly Disgusting!!!
I can't believe that a modern Govenment would even consider such an uncivilized, disrespectful and immoral action.

Best Regards, David

[Fridolin]

Disgraceful!!! Shameful !!! Shocking!!!

Email sent.

[JAB42]

Does Ellensohn understand English? If not could somebody translate my email before I send it to him?

[Mike G.]

Thanks for the info. Message sent.

Is this initiative already a done deal?


Mike G.

[WMDGreen]

Dear VonGreim

That's another e-mail sent then ! This is a pitiful, and deeply hurtful, outrage.

Just for the record my beloved late father, William Green (Snr) was in the RAF, and he would have been bloody annoyed by this. We were both great admirers of the so-called 'enemy'.

Kind regards

William David Green. North East England, UK.

[wilhelmrenner]

All,

I've informed a friend of mine who is a USAAF vet (P-38/P-47 pilot) about this. Some of his good friends are German former-Luftwaffe pilots, including Generalleutnant (ret) Krupinski. It steamed my U.S. friend something good, and I'm sure it'll raise some eyebrows in Europe, once some of those guys who fought with Major Nowotny find out what that son-of-a-bitch in Vienna is trying to do.

Hopefully, at the very least, if Major Nowotny is moved, he can be relocated to a military cemetary where he'll be with his comrades-in-arms once again.

[Vicgonz]

i'm amazing for such attitude.
i cannot believe this
i remember my first model (a Messerschmitt 262 ) & i painting with the pattern of herr Walter Nowotny & these notice makes me feel sad
What a hell thinks these little bastards?
LET THE DEAD BURIED THE DEAD...by God !!!
i support you von Greim
Regards

[wwiibuff]

Ridiculous. I to sent an e-mail. To bad they don't have recalls like California.