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Two charged for blasting ‘Heil Hitler’ on Austrian train

Excerpts from the Nazi leader's speeches were played over the intercom.

Adolf Hitler and Porsche company founder Ferdinand Porsche (left) ogle a model of the original Volkswagen Beetle. Credit: JNS File Photo.
Adolf Hitler and Porsche company founder Ferdinand Porsche (left) ogle a model of the original Volkswagen Beetle. Credit: JNS File Photo.

Two people were charged on Monday in Austria for playing recordings of speeches by Adolf Hitler over the public address system of a train en route from Bregenz to Vienna a day earlier.

The system initially played a series of bloopers by the actor who voices the train’s announcements as well as a fire alarm message.

Over a subsequent period of 20 minutes, excerpts of Hitler’s speeches were played, as were repeated shouts of “Heil Hitler.”

Disseminating Nazi propaganda is a criminal offense in Austria, Hitler’s birth country, which the Nazis annexed into the Third Reich in 1938.

Authorities tracked down the suspects by analyzing the train’s surveillance footage. The accused are believed to have accessed the communication system using an employee’s key to open the conductor’s cabin.

The two are also suspects in two similar incidents last week on trains running from St. Poelten to Vienna.

In 2016, Austrian authorities took control of the house where Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in the town of Braunau, in a bid to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.

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