Austria's Parliament has cancelled an event due to take place on International Women's Day (March 8) after learning that one of the eyewitnesses invited has compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

Hedy Epstein, an American Jewish pro-boycott activist who survived the Second World War as a Kindertransport child in England, had been due to speak at the event.

She was to represent Holocaust survivors and was reportedly the only Jew on the panel.

The cancellation followed severe criticism from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Israel director, Efraim Zuroff, who told the Jerusalem Post that Ms Epstein, who was born in Germany, is a "notorious anti-Zionist who doesn't miss an opportunity to exploit her biography to attack Israel".

According to the Austrian Press Association, a parliamentary spokesperson said it had been difficult to find eyewitnesses who were in good enough health to come to such an event, and there would be no attempt to reconstitute the panel. Oskar Deutsch, head of the Vienna Jewish community, told the APA that the cancellation had resolved the matter.