For some odd reason, Austrian Airlines decided to promote its operations by comparing itself to the KGB Soviet secret police. According to its advertising, Austrian Airlines touts itself as “the most tightly knit network in the East since the KGB.”

Perhaps the marketers in Vienna have short memories, so they should be reminded that the KGB was not merely a close group of drinking buddies, but a highly organized police force whose key goal was to crush freedom movements, deprive Eastern Europeans of their basic freedoms and rights, assassinate political opponents, imprison dissidents and occasionally attempt to overthrow democratically elected governments, including Austria’s.

We can only imagine what Austrian Airlines will dream up next. Will they dare claim that their flights arrive and depart with punctuality that would make the Nazis’ Gestapo envious? Or, that if Hitler was alive today, then he would definitely fly Austrian Airlines.

Perhaps the Austrians have forgotten that officers from the precursors of the KGB, known by the acronyms NKVD and NKGB, issued orders to shoot and kill all Austrians attempting to leave Soviet-occupied Vienna after Austria surrendered in 1945.

[i]Editorial , Kyiv Post, November 7 2007)

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