Whater the Jews of Austria are to receive compensation for the property and other valuables taken from them during the Nazi regime hinges on the interpretation of “aryanization” which is finally agreed to by the Council of Foreign Ministers, now meeting here to draft peace treaties for Germany and Austria.
According to Dr. Karl Gruber, Austrian Foreign Minister, who is here at the head of a delegation representing his government, there is little possibility that the Jews will regain their holdings if the Soviet position, that aryanization with compensation was a valid transaction making the property German owned, is upheld.
However, if aryanization with compensation is held to be a form of force and duress, as argued by the U. S. and British representatives, then there is a good chance that a portion of the pre-Anschluss Jewish property may revert to its owners or their heirs, since all the Big Four are agreed that property seized by force and duress must be returned to the owners and does not constitute German property under the Potsdam Agreement.
Secretary of State Marshall has suggested that arbitration machinery be set up to pass en doubtful cases, but the Soviet position is that there is no need for such machinery, since the guiding rule should be payment. If an Austrian national was paid for his property by a German or the German state, the property is Germans, the Russians say. The joker in this is that in virtually all cases, the Germans went through the legal formality of “paying” for aryanized property, although the payments represented a fraction of the property’s value.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
