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Austrian Government Names Board to Distribute $21,000,000 in Claims Fund

June 1, 1956
See Original Daily Bulletin From This Date
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The Austrian Government has designated the eight members and eight alternate members of the board that, on the basis of an agreement reached in June 1955 with the Committee for Jewish Claims on Austria, is to administer the distribution to Nazi victims from Austria of the $21,000,000 fund which will be made available for relief and rehabilitation purposes over the next ten years.

Chairman of the board is Dr. Franz Sobek, director general of the Government Printing Office here and himself a former inmate of the Dachau concentration camp, as well as president of the League of Nazi Victims. As executive secretary, the board has appointed Dr. George Weis, who for the past several years headed the Berlin office of the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization. He is already here.

The four Jewish members of the eight-man board are Dr. Charles Kapralik of London and Hermann Kraemer of Tel Aviv, both active in representative bodies of Jews from Austria; Vienna insurance executive Norbert Liebermann and Dr. Emil Maurer, the president of the Vienna Jewish Community. The alternate Jewish members are Fred Jellinek of New York, Felix Bacher, a Vienna businessman, and Wilhelm Krell, the executive director of the Vienna Jewish Community. The Catholic Church is represented by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Leopold Unger, who is of Jewish ancestry.

The board agreed that the Fund will begin to function on June Land that applications for compensation payments will have to be filed within a year. It is estimated that some 15,000 former Austrian Jews, who for the most part now live in the United States, England and Israel, will eventually benefit.

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