Austrian Government Asked to Indemnify Jewish Victims of Nazism

A plea for Austrian Government recognition of its responsibility toward Jewish victims of the Nazis was voiced here today by Barnett Janner. president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, at a meeting of the board.

He noted that 20 years after the “Anschluss” of Nazi Germany and Austria, when the Austrian population had welcomed and cooperated with the Nazis, nothing had been done to “remedy the wrongs inflicted upon the Jews. ” He pointed out that the German Government claimed it was not responsible for Nazi doings in Austria, while the Austrian Government conveniently forgot the popular Austrian acceptance of the Nazi regime.

The Council of Jews from Austria in Britain today condemned the Austrian Parliament for its failure in 13 years to pass “any comprehensive law to indemnify Jews from Austria” for wrongs suffered during the Nazi regime in that country.

Acting on the twentieth anniversary of the establishment of the Nazi regime in Austria, the organization declared that “a considerable proportion of the Austrian people, by reason of its conduct before, during and after” the Nazi regime, was “responsible for it and for the ensuing persecution of Austrian Jews. “

The resolution also emphasized that provisions for Nazi victims in the Austrian state treaty of June 1955 had not been put into effect and that measures taken so far by the Austrian Government, “welcome as they are. represent an entirely insufficient beginning of a solution. ” The resolution urged the Austrian Federal Republic to grant Jews from Austria the sam measure of indemnification as the West German Republic has given to Jews from Germany.