Austrian pastry maker says sorry for making cakes with Nazi themes

07 April 2011

An Austrian pastry maker has apologized after causing a stir for baking cakes with elaborate Nazi symbols such as the swastika. Manfred Klaschka said it had been a mistake to make the cakes, but he was not a racist. The Mauthausen Committee, a group of Holocaust survivors, said Klatschka’s bakery, located in a village near Vienna, offered cakes adorned with a sugary swastika or with a baby raising its right hand in a Nazi salute, according to pictures in his catalogue.

On Tuesday, Klaschka told the Austrian state broadcaster ORF at his cafe that "if someone orders it, I make it." Willi Mernyi, the chairman of the Mauthausen Committee, said in response that "this is exactly the sort of thinking led us into the disaster 70 years ago." The group has brought charges against Klaschka earlier this week on suspicion that he violated laws that ban neo-Nazi activities and the display of Nazi symbols. Under Austrian law, the public glorification of the Nazi era and attempts to diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust are prohibited.

Klaschka now told the newspaper ‘Kurier’ that it had been a mistake to make the cakes and that he had nothing to do with Hitler. He added he was not a racist and currently working on a cake for Turkish clients.