Sir, - Your report on Chancellor Schussel's visit to Dublin highlighted the extent to which the present Austrian government is attempting, once again, to deny Austria's war-time past.
Throughout the 1990s, Austria was engaged in a slow process of recognition of the country's recent history, and in particular its collective collusion in Nazi war crimes. Chancellor Schussel has attempted to reverse this debate, by returning to the image of Austria as Hitler's "first victim". There were thousands of individual Austrian victims of the Nazis - this is fact - but Schussel's comments attempt to deny the fact that the Austrian polity, in the post-war years, erased the memory of Austrian collaboration with the Nazis, and that many former Nazis retained their places in the Austrian establishment after the war. This collective responsibility is also fact.
Austrian society has appeared ready to acknowledge these facts. That Schussel wishes to deny them once again is indicative of the unsavoury nature of the present right-wing Austrian administration. One wonders at the Taoiseach's willingness to be associated with it. - Yours, etc.,
NEIL HEGARTY, Wilton Place, Dublin 2.