Austrian Government Passes Law Facilitating Return of Confiscated Jewish Property

The Austrian Government today published a law which will have the double-barrelled effect of making it easier for Jews to regain their property and harder for the Russians to claim as reparations everything the Germans once held.

Since the Russians, who opposed the law before the Allied Council here, could not get unanimous Big Four disapproval, the measure has now gone into effect. Passed by Parliament on May 15, the new statute calls null and void all legal transactions which, with or without compensation, took place after the Anschluss (March 12, 1938) depriving Austrians of property they had previously held legally.

The effect of this will be to change the whole burden-of-proof procedure in countless current property disputes. Previously, a Jew trying to regain his property had to prove that he had been forced to surrender his property or, in any event, had been cheated on the deal. Now the present owner will have to prove that he acquired a given piece of property under fair conditions, for the legal assumption now is that all such transactions were concluded under some form of duress and are no longer binding.

The law also affects the legal status of the Russian claim to so-called German assets in Austria, Heretofore the Russians gladly accepted the Nazi records of what was German and what was non-German property since that gave them the largest possible so-called German assets to take as reparations. But now they, too, must assume the legal burden of proving their claims.

The Red Army, meanwhile, since July 6 has proceeded with the seizure of 7,887 hectares of land of more than 20,000 hectares claimed. Of 22 properties already taken, ten belonged to Jews until the Nazis squeezed them out.