The Senate Foreign Relations Committee today deferred a State Department-supported measure to pay $6,000,000 reimbursement for World War II losses to 131 Austrian Nazis and pro-Hitler Austrian collaborators.
Senator George A. Smathers, Florida Democrat, could see no merit in American taxpayers reimbursing Nazis. He urged the committee to delay action. Chairman J.W. Fulbright, Arkansas Democrat, announced that the committee would defer action, pending a complete report from the Justice Department.
A State Department spokesman said the reimbursement bill should be approved because none of the Austrian Nazis to be benefited were convicted of major war crimes. It was revealed that the State Department quietly signed a treaty with Austria on Jan. 30, 1959, undertaking to appropriate funds to the former Austrian Nazis. Most of the restitution would go to two individuals, Oskar Teuber, an ex-Nazi, and Countess Marianne Thun-Hohenstein, a devotee of Adolf Hitler.
A Justice Department memorandum said: “The primary class of persons benefited are persons who were active collaborators with the Nazis, who aided the conspiracy which led to the downfall of Austria in 1938, and who are not entitled to favorable consideration either by the United States or Austria.”
Among the beneficiaries of the measure are a considerable number of Austrian anti-Semites. The Justice Department said “the proposed treaty would take away a portion of the funds which have been devoted by Congress as a trust fund for United States war claimants, and would turn it over to Nazis, collaborators, and war criminals.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
