Austrian far-right figure quits over Nazi song scam

VIENNA: The Austrian far-right figure at the centre of a scandal over song lyrics praising the Holocaust announced on Thursday his resignation after what he called a "media witch-hunt".

Udo Landbauer, lead candidate for the Freedom Party (FPOe) in elections in Lower Austria state last Sunday, said he was giving up all political functions including as a local deputy. Landbauer, 31, who was also head of the FPOe’s youth wing the RFJ, said he had been trying for days to refute all accusations against him.

But with his local party branch "under siege", Landbauer he said he was giving in to a "media witch-hunt" in order to "take my family out of the firing line". He also suspended his membership of the FPOe, which since December has been part of Austria’s ruling coalition, and said he was going on holiday, the Austria Press Agency reported.

Last week the Falter weekly reported that Landbauer’s student fraternity had produced a song book in 1997 that included lyrics such as "Step on the gas... we can make it to seven million". Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust during World War II, many of them in gas chambers at industrial-scale extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Several leading members of the FPOe -- a party created by former Nazis in the 1950s -- belong to student fraternities, some of which believe in a "Greater Germany" to include Austria.