Passengers on a Vienna-bound train listened to parts of a speech given by Adolf Hitler to the public address system last night. Also came “Heil Hitler” and “Sig Heil”. Austrian police arrested two suspects. Perhaps the train staff is not to blame.

The suspects would open the intercom boxes with a key and hold the phone in the microphone. They played the respective recordings on the phone. Before Hitler’s shrapnel, the slips of the tongue could already be heard from the voice actor who recorded all the broadcast messages for the Austrian Railways. In total it took According to the ORF broadcaster more than ten minutes.

Dotted above the train are several boxes from which the public address system can be operated. Once the system is activated, other chests are blocked. As a result, the conductors were not immediately successful in stopping the false broadcast messages.

Travelers reacted in surprise and bewilderment to the broadcast messages, and it can be seen on Twitter:

Also on board were journalists, politicians, and Viennese rabbi Shlomo Hofmeister. he he says in a tweet that some travelers made fun of the letters. He is also angry that no explanation was given later regarding the error.

This is the third time in a short time that the intercom system on a train on the St. Polten-Vienna route has been hijacked. With the help of camera images, two travelers were caught after they arrived in Vienna. A complaint has been filed against them.

Carrier ÖBB says the suspects may have a global key for intercom boxes, which are used by railway companies across Europe. There are an estimated tens of thousands of them in circulation, an ORF spokesperson said.

The news coincides with the announcement that 719 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in Austria last year, the second highest number since registration began. Only in 2021 have there been more.

In the vast majority of cases, according to the Vienna Jewish Community (IKG), which keeps track of numbers, it was due to anti-Semitic behaviour. More than 120 cases of vandalism, 21 threats and 14 real attacks were also counted.