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Austrians Are Anti-semitic, Inquiry Committee is Told; Premier Testifies on Jews

February 21, 1946
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Chancellor Leopold Figl of Austria, yesterday testified before the Anglo-American inquiry committee on the situation of the Jews in this country, it was announced today. Correspondents were not allowed to attend the hearings.

Dr. Benson Saks, JDC director in Austria, who testified earlier, told the Committee that the Austrian man in the street is strongly anti-Semitic and that the majority of the 3,613 Austrian Jews in Vienna desire to emigrate to Palestine.

A sub-committee consisting of Frank Buxton, Wilfred Crick and Maj. Reginald Manningham-Buller, which is touring the U.S. zone in Austria, today visited the Binder-Michi camp, near Linz, which houses 2,300 DP’s. They were met with banners calling for “Justice for the Jewish People.” Ninety-nine and six-tenths percent of the camp inmates have voted to go to Palestine.

The sub-committee later questioned leaders of the Central Committee of the Jews of Upper Austria, who said that there was no possibility that the Jews would be willing to stay in this country. If the Americans leave, they said, “the Jews will somehow find a way of getting on a boat to Palestine.”

In a report made to the inquiry committee this week by the U.S. Army, it was disclosed that one-third of the 6,790 Jews in Austria are listed as being in “poor mental or physical state.”

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