The chairperson of EU’s military committee (EUMC), Austrian general Robert Brieger, has allegedly posted a controversial reply on Facebook to a Holocaust denier. Now he has to explain himself to EU’s foreign policy chief, High Representative Josep Borrell.
The exchange of emails between Brieger, a former military chief of staff of Austria, and a known Holocaust denier, was exposed by Der Standard last week. According to the newspaper, the Holocaust denier, a retired police officer, has been sharing revisionist theories about the Holocaust and other conspiracy theories on Facebook for years.
In 2023, he obviously shared again an article about the Rhine meadow camps in 2023, including a link to a right-wing extremist site. These were prison camps that the Allies ran along the Rhine for German prisoners of war from April 1945.
In the post, the former police officer repeated the lie that German corpses had been dug up there and passed off as Jewish corpses in order to manipulate the number of victims of the Holocaust. The newspaper found that Brieger had commented to the post: "Above all, it is a concealed chapter in the history of the victors."
Brieger did not reply immediately to a request for comment from the newspaper. Nor did his office reply to a similar request from The Brussels Times today.
The EUMC is the highest military body set up within the Council, and is composed of the Chiefs of Defence (CHODs) of the EU member states, according to its website. In his role as chairperson of the military committee, general Brieger is also acting as the military adviser to High Representative Borrell and is attending the foreign affairs council meetings.
Thomas Waitz, an Austrian MEP for the Greens, has already called for a review of whether Brieger can continue to the chair the EUMC and contacted both the Commission and the EEAS about the incident. Does Borrell trust his military advisor?
“We take this issue extremely seriously,” a Commission spokesperson told The Brussels Times at today’s press conference. The High Representative is seeking further clarifications from Brieger and has already received a letter from him explaining the circumstances and Borrell will reply to the letter in due time. The EU believes that Holocaust denial and distortion is totally unacceptable, the spokesperson added.
M. Apelblat
The Brussels Times
