The Falter weekly recently published a picture of Kleppich wearing a green shirt bearing the words "stand your ground" and "Frundsberg." Frundsberg was a German Waffen-SS armored division from World War II. The Waffen-SS were the military wing of the Schutzstaffel, the infamous overseers of the concentration camp system, an elite group formed by only the most hardcore Nazi ideologues. Falter also reported that Kleppich had previously posted a photo of his grandfather in a Nazi uniform on social media.
Kleppich is a member of the far-right Freedom Party, a national-conservative political party in Austria led by Heinz-Christian Strache. In December, Kleppich was sent to Tel Aviv to help out at the Austrian embassy for several months, according to Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl.
According to the Times of Israel, the shirt Kleppich was wearing is sold by Phalanx Europa, an online store that sells "patriotic" clothes for those supporting the identitarian movement, a European and North American white nationalist movement started in France in 2012.
On Tuesday, Kneissl's ministry released an order that Kleppich "be summoned to Vienna immediately to submit to a legal probe into the accusations in the media," the Times of Israel reported.
Austria's far-right Freedom Party was founded by ex-Nazis in the 1950s. Although the party claims to denounce racism and extremism, a candidate of the party in the state election quit in January after his student fraternity published a songbook with lyrics praising the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of six million Jewish people and over five million other victims. The song included the words, "Step on the gas, old Germanics, we can make it to seven million."
Although Strache has visited Israel several times and advocates moving the Austrian embassy to Jerusalem after US President Donald Trump's controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December, the Israeli government refuses to have direct contact with any Freedom Party members.