Stephan Templ is a 56-year-old Austrian, a historian specializing in Nazism and the Holocaust, and he’s just been let out of a Viennese prison after serving eight months of a three-year sentence that had been reduced on appeal to one year. The story begins in 2001 when he published a book, Unser Wien (Our Vienna), about the nation-wide theft of property carried out by Austrians in the time of Adolf Hitler. One such property, a sanatorium, had belonged to relations – in the face of persecution they had committed suicide. On behalf of his mother, Templ put in a claim for the restitution to which she was entitled. The authorities then counter-claimed that he had failed to declare an aunt who was also entitled to her share of this restitution. Moreover, this aunt’s share was due to end in the hands of the state, therefore Templ could be charged with defrauding the state.

The lawyer for the defense made it clear that this fictitious case is the state’s payback for Templ’s book. Documents discovered in the files of the bureaucracy reveal that as a matter of fact Templ had from the outset declared the aunt’s interest. The bad faith of the authorities cannot be doubted. From their point of view, this tiresome Templ fellow has been getting in the way of the good old war profiteering that benefits the entire nation. There stands today’s Europe in all its greed and immorality: Get someone else to pay! Blame the Jews! To hell with justice!