Jewish school smashed up in Austria, man arrested

VIENNA, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Austrian police today detained a man suspected of breaking into a Jewish community school overnight and systematically smashing windows and porcelain with a crowbar, officials said.

Jewish community leaders denounced the incident as the worst anti-Semitic incident in Austria for two decades and showed reporters a trail of destruction on all three floors of the Lauder Chabad School in the capital Vienna.

The school, which has 360 pupils from kindergarten to high school-age, was unoccupied and unguarded in the early hours today. A police spokesman said the man was detained at the scene after residents nearby called in noise complaints to police.

Jewish community leader Ariel Muzicant said the incident could not be likened to arson attacks on synagogues in France in recent years or the 1938 ''Kristallnacht'' (Night of Shattering Glass) pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany.

''I don't want to create the impression that Jews face once again being beaten on the streets of Austria,'' he said amidst heaps of glass shards including from a display case whose sports trophies lay on the floor, misshapen from heavy blows.

''This is an act of vandalism, it's not a tragedy. Nothing was burned down, no one was hurt. We don't know whether this was the act of a mentally ill person or an (organised) political act. We must avoid making generalisations,'' he told reporters.

''However, it is no doubt an anti-Semitic act, done out of rage and hatred. It's very disturbing. But we will not be intimidated,'' Muzicant added, saying he hoped the incident would spur efforts to improve public education against bigotry.

School board member Jacob Biberman said classes would resume tomorrow after a cleanup.

Colourful paintings and drawings by schoolchildren were left untouched, and no swastikas or anti-Semitic graffiti were found.

Muzicant said the last serious anti-Semitic attack in Austria was in the mid-1980s when a number of gravestones were desecrated by neo-Nazis.

Austria's small Jewish community leads a generally well integrated life, although its schools in Vienna have police guards when classes are in session.

There are two small, far-right parties in Austria's parliament who deny periodic accusations that some members harbour neo-Nazi sympathies.

Former Freedom Party leader Joerg Haider drew international condemnation for praising Nazi Germany's employment policies and Hitler's Waffen SS elite force, but later apologised.

REUTERS KR RN2243