Seventy-one-year-old Anna Robinson today related to a correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency the circumstances under which her home was returned to her after it had been presented by the Soviet military administration to a non-Jewish family.
Mrs. Robinson said that in 1938 she left her house and fled to Katowice, Poland, where she met her daughter, her daughter’s husband, Carl Schneider, and their two children. After her flight, the Gestapo removed her furniture and gave the house to a Gestapo official, Karl Koeppen. Mrs. Robinson’s name remained in the official real estate register as owner, and a certain Dr. Artur Przyhoski was appointed by the Nazi authorities as administrator. Koeppen paid seventy marks monthly rent to the administrator.
In 1941, Mrs. Robinson and her family were evacuated from Poland by the Soviet authorities and sent to the Ural section of the USSR. They remained there until Sept. 1945 when they were repatriated to Katowice as Polish citizens. A month later they reached Vienna. They found that Mrs. Robinson’s house was occupied by a certain Josephine Kaluzik, who is half-Jewish and whose husband was executed by the Nazis as a Communist.
Mrs. Kaluzik produced a document, dated May 10, 1946, stating that the house and its contents had been given to her as a gift by the Red Army. The document, bearing the title “Gift Certificate,” was signed by Col. Sawenok for the Red Army command in Vienna.
Upon a complaint lodged by the Robinson family with the British military authorities–since the house lies in the zone taken over by the British in Sept., 1945–Soviet authorities asked the family for detailed information. They were advised that according to the real estate register Mrs. Robinson still held full legal title to the house, and that title had never been transferred by the Nazis.
The ownership of the house is still not clear, because the Austrian “commissar” who has been entrusted with administration of the property says that the Nazi clause placing the house under the supervision of a “commissar” cannot be fully revoked until new laws have been passed. However, it seems that Mrs. Kaluzik now recognizes the right of the Robinson family to the house, since she not only shares it with them, but is also paying 60 shillings monthly rental to Mrs. Robinson.
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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.
