Austria’s former vice chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache described Jews as “power-hungry” “enemies” in a dedication inscribed into an antisemitic book, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The inscription, bearing the former far-right Freedom Party leader’s name, reads: “This book should give you an insight into the perfidious and power-hungry Jewish way of thinking.

“As this country’s political elite, we have to study our enemies, expose their wild ideas and confront them”.

Mr Strache made the inscription in Jüdische Bekenntnisse, an antisemitic tract written by Hans Jonak von Freyenwald, an Austrian civil servant. It was first published in 1941 by the publisher of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.

Jüdische Bekenntnisse is “the work of a fanatical antisemite” and a “compendium of Jew-hatred”, according to Wolfgang Benz, director of Berlin’s Center for Research on Antisemitism.

The inscribed edition was published in 1992, when Strache was a local politician in Vienna. The dedication indicates the book was a gift to a friend or colleague for “Julfest”, the name the Nazi regime gave to Christmas after taking power in 1933.

According to Strache’s lawyer, he does not recall writing such a dedication and rejects the book’s antisemitic worldview.

Strache was Austria’s vice-chancellor until May 2019, when he resigned following the publication of tapes which showed him offering future state contracts to a woman he believed to be the niece of a Russian oligarch in return for her financial support.

Last month he established a new political party, Team Strache, with a view to running for the mayoralty in Vienna’s local elections in October.

Team Strache is currently polling at 5 percent.