The “most important Jewish trustee in charge of Jewish property in Austria,” Dr. Oscar Wilheim, has been arrested by Soviet authorities for opposing the Russian seizure of Jewish-owned land holdings, the New York Times reported today in a dispatch from Vienna.
According to the report, the Russian authorities had become “outraged” by Dr. Wilheim’s continued resistance to Soviet occupation of Jewish property held by the Austrian Settlement Company, of which Dr. Wilheim is the head, and had ordered Wilheim and four others, one an official of the Ministry of Economic Planning, to report yesterday to the Russian military headquarters in Vienna. None of the men has been seen since.
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