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(dpa/NAN)
Austria is to award civil engagement against anti-Semitism with a prize worth 30,000 euros (34,000 dollars), according to a statement issued by the country’s parliament on Tuesday.
All parliamentary fractions except the right-wing FPOe voted in favour of the award, which will also honour projects raising awareness about the holocaust.
The prize should “give others courage to raise their voices,” President of the National Council Wolfgang Sobotka said.
The prize will honour up to three people or groups each year and is to be named after Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal, who after liberation from the concentration camp Mauthausen in 1945, spent his life finding Nazi criminals and bringing them to court.
The FPOe did not support the initiative because it disagreed with the name.
The party suggested naming the prize after the Social Democrat Chancellor Bruno Keisky, a suggestion rejected by the Social Democrats.
