Neturei Karta join forces with Neo-Nazis

Even for one of Europe's quirkier capitals, it was a bizarre spectacle -- a far-right politician who has questioned the existence of Nazi gas chambers noshing on salmon pate at a bar mitzvah and tapping his foot to wildly pulsating Hasidic music.

"The rabbi is a good friend of mine," John Gudenus said of his host. "Why, we've even had him over to the house!"

Brooklyn-born Moishe Arye Friedman says he's chief rabbi for hundreds of anti-Zionist orthodox Jews in Vienna. He wants formal state recognition of his religious community, and thinks the rightists can help. Gudenus and his cohorts say they have no hidden agenda in supporting Friedman's cause -- but they may have something to gain from it.

"For people like this, being seen with an orthodox Jew is an attempt to gain some legitimacy," says Wolfgang Neugebauer, the recently retired head of the publicly funded office that tracks neo-Nazi trends in Austria. "They try to create an `alibi Jew' to escape accusations of anti-Semitism."