U.S. Government to Issue Statement on Austria’s Pro-nazi Laws

The U.S. Government may, within a few days, issue a statement deploring the laws passed earlier this month by the Austrian Parliament restoring property and civil rights to more than 20,000 former members of the Nazi Party in Austria, it was learned here today.

An American veto of the pro-Nazi laws through the Allied Council in Vienna is expected. A State Department spokesman today said that the U.S. Government is postponing issuance of its statement on Austria’s new legislation "pending one further development in Austria." He did not indicate the nature of the expected development.

American Jewish organizations which have vigorously protested the Austrian laws restoring property to former Nazis while trying to nullify legally valid restitution decisions in favor of Jews, today continued their fight against the projected formation by the Austrian Government of a "Hardship Settlement Fund" from heirless Jewish property. Part of this fund will be set aside as "compensation" to be paid to former holders of "Aryanized" properties impoverished by the restitution of such properties to rightful owners.

Terming the Austrian bill for the creation of the Hardship Settlement Fund "scandalous legislation," an American Jewish Committee representative here declared that the features of the bill "indicate the fantastic extent of injustices and prevarication the rulers of Austria have been willing to employ for the satisfaction of neo-Nazi appetites at the expense of the victims of Nazism." The bill was introduced in the Austrian Parliament jointly by Chancellor Leopold Figl’s People’s Party and the Social Democratic Party.

The bill not only proposes that all heirless and unclaimed Jewish property be confiscated by the Fund, but also that a 50 percent capital levy be imposed on properties restituted to the living owners or their heirs. The bill is expected to be considered by the Austrian Parliament early this Fall.