The Evening Star said today German Nazis may demand ransom for female members of the Rothschild family now detained in Vienna, as well as for Baron Louis Rothschild, head of the family’s Vienna branch. The same newspaper said London financial and commercial leaders were convinced that the holding of important Jews for ransom gave new proof of Germany’s acute need for foreign currency.
According to the Daily Herald, the ransom for Baron Rothschild was fixed at £2,000,000 ($10,000,000), as “compensation” for losses suffered in 1931 with collapse of the Kreditanstalt, giant bank of which he was president.
Laborite sources said a close friend of the Vienna Rothschilds, an English captain, had made several trips to Paris and London since the Baron’s arrest and imprisonment, and the Nazis expected all branches of the family to contribute to the ransom. They added that Baron Rothschild, first sent to a concentration camp, is now held at the Hotel Metropole, Vienna headquarters of the German Secret Police, and that the has been allowed to see no one, not even his lawyer.
Baron Alphonse and Baron Eugene his younger brothers, are now in Paris. They are not connected with the Vienna banking house which their brother owned.
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.
