Oberwart / Wien. The chairman of the Roma ethnic group advisory board has thoughtful but conciliatory notes. 25 years after the Oberwart explosives attack, which cost the lives of four Roma members in February 1995, Emmerich Gärtner-Horvath noted a “rethinking”: “It is in favor of togetherness”, he diagnoses in conversation with the “Wiener Zeitung” to development since then.
Gärtner-Horvath was scheduled to speak on Tuesday evening at the commemorative act and commemorative march to the assassination attempt in the Roma settlement. In addition to raising awareness in dealing with the ethnic group, “a lot has happened in the education sector,” Gärtner-Horvath summarizes. Before that, everything was “rather tough”, everything went much faster after the attack.
The attack should be remembered as a “memorial”
In order to underline what he means by rethinking, he describes his impressions after the fatal assassination became known. The words “Roma back to India” had lured the brothers Karl and Erwin Horvath, Josef Simon and Peter Sarközi into a pipe bomb trap the night of February 5, 1995. Researched in 1997 and sentenced in 1999 to Styrian Franz Fuchs, who committed suicide in prison. On the way to Oberwart he heard on the radio at the time that it was a “gypsy feud”, recalls Gärtner-Horvath. Even today he puzzles how such a message could go out.
At the same time, however, he positively emphasizes the attitude of the then mayor of Oberwart, Michael Racz. The latter did not allow gaps between the majority population and the Roma to be torn open. The attack, the largest racially motivated attack in the Second Republic, was supposed to be a “memorial”.
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