Austria’s parliament elected a far-right speaker today for the first time, with the Jewish community expressing outrage at the choice of a person who “pays tribute to Nazi criminals”.

Walter Rosenkranz, 62, received 100 votes, out of 162 MPs who voted, announced the outgoing speaker of the parliament, Wolfgang Sobotka.

Rosencrantz’s election follows the “historic” victory of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) in September’s parliamentary elections. Rosenkratz was elected mainly thanks to the votes of the far-right and conservative ÖVP party.

In a country where the far right is no longer “taboo”, outgoing chancellor Karl Neuhammer justified his party’s support for Rosencrantz, citing the “tradition” that dictates the position of speaker of parliament to be taken by a person from the party who won the election. Other MPs, however, said they wanted to vote with their conscience and not a “Europhobic” politician from a party “increasingly edging towards far-right extremism”.

FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl, for his part, spoke of (Rosencrantz’s) “unwavering faith in our beloved Republic of Austria, democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Walter Rosencrantz has belonged since 1981 to a far-right association (Burschenschaft), “Libertas”, which had since 1878 adopted a clause prohibiting the membership of Jews. During World War II many members of such associations operated within the Nazi extermination machine in Austria annexed by Adolf Hitler.

“That paragraph has been repealed a long time ago,” Rosencrantz himself recently commented when asked about the issue.

Before the secret vote, Oskar Deutsch, the representative of the Jewish community of Vienna, in an open letter to the deputies expressed his opposition to the election of a person of the “revisionist camp” who “honors Nazi criminals”.

The Greens also deemed the election of Rosencrantz, who also chairs the National Fund for Victims of Nazism, as “incompatible with Europe” as parliament speaker, commenting that it was “an insult to all survivors”.