The heavy iron door to the Austrian National Archives
swings open, revealing rows of green shelves laden with
hundreds of document-stuffed cardboard boxes.
The papers stored here bear horrifying, voiceless
testimony to the holocaust of Austrian Jewry. These are
the property declarations Austria's Jewish citizens were
forced to make following the Anschluss, in March 1938.
Behind every such declaration detailing the assets
plundered from Austrian Jewry, lurks a personal tragedy,
loss of property and almost certainly - loss of life.
But despite the existence of full documentation, Austria
persists in her refusal to pay compensation in respect of
the stolen property. Only after long-drawn-out, laborious
negotiations has Vienna been prepared to pay anything at
all, and even then, usually some ludicrous token
amount.
Since the end of World War II, Austrian leaders have
stubbornly sung the same old refrain: Austria was Nazi
Germany's first victim, and is therefore obliged to
compensate nobody.
Officially, perhaps, Austria was indeed occupied by
Germany. But the annexation, or Anschluss, was greeted
with great enthusiasm in the native land of both Adolf
Hitler and Adolf Eichmann. Cinema footage shows the
masses lining the streets of Vienna, cheering swastika-
bedizened tanks. The enthusiasm was rapidly translated
into practical action: within a week, the plundering of
Jewish property began. Jews were fired from their jobs,
community leaders and businessmen were sent to the Dachau
concentration camp, synagogues were desecrated. When
Hermann Goering imposed upon the Reich's Jewish residents
a one billion mark "fine" following Krystalnacht,
Austrian Jewish property too was confiscated.
Immediately prior to the Anschluss, Austria had a
Jewish population of some 185,000. Of these, 126,000
emigrated before the war broke out, and another 2,000
left subsequently. All left almost all their property
behind. 15,000 of the emigres, trapped in their
countries of refuge, were murdered. Over 65,000 of the
Jews of Austria herself were murdered. When the Holocaust
was over, only 1,747 deportees survived.
On April 27, 1938, a mere six weeks after the
Anschluss, the Jews of Austria were required to declare
any property valued at more than 5,000 marks. Detailed
forms were printed for the purpose, specifying penalties
for anyone failing to report by June 10th: "A fine,
prison for serious crimes, confiscation of property
etc.". In 1940, the Germans evaluated the private
property (not including the community property and real
estate, of Austrian Jewry, including emigres, at $1.5
billion. In real terms, this represents over $15 billion
- not improbable in relation to 185,000 persons.
All forms reside in the National Archives in
Vienna.
One way or another almost all the property was stolen.
Those who managed to get out of Austria while the going
was good were forced to pay an "emigration tax" and sell
their property for a song. Austrian holocaust victims
were robbed of their property while still on home ground,
or on arrival at the concentration camps. In Austria,
uniquely, the theft was documented, by means of the
property declaration, even down to individual level.
In cases of "Aryanisation", or sale anticipatory to
emigration, the price paid for the property is fully
documented. The difference between this consideration
and the value of the property, as declared, represents
the plunder. As for Jews murdered in the Holocaust, their
remaining property was obviously stolen as a whole. There
is living testimony to complete the tale told by the
voiceless documents.
Relates Gideon Eckhaus, Chairman of the Committee of
Former Austrians in Israel: "My late father and his
brother were partners in two shops, selling clothing and
haberdashery. By chance, my father had gone to Italy on
business five days before the Anschluss, and was unable
to return. The nazis stood two commissars outside the
two shops, and one of them, named Mueller, ordered me to
work in the shop without pay. He would come mainly in the
evenings, to count the takings, of which he would
abstract not a little.
"An uncle of mine owned a very big international
forwarding firm. He was taken to Buchenwald, and after a
week or two, a box arrived containing his ashes. The
nazis forced my aunt to run the business in such a way
that it went bankrupt. They did this in thousands of
instances: it was a method. The Austrian economy
presently ranks 11th in the world in terms of volume.
You need only study the history of Austrian diligence to
draw your own conclusions as to the sources of her
wealth".
In recent years, the Austrian authorities have
perceptibly changed their attitude toward their country's
nazi-era past. The change of attitude, has not, however,
spilled over into any concrete moves in the direction of
compensating the victims. A start was made by the
Austrian Kanzler who, on a visit to Israel in June 1993,
admitted his countrymen's crimes during the holocaust era
and sought the forgiveness of the survivors and the
descendants of those who died. This was carried a step
further in November 1994 by the President of Austria who,
speaking to Israel's Knesset, acknowledged: "We are well
aware that for far too long we did not do enough, perhaps
we did not do the proper things, to ease the fate of
those saved from the Jewish tragedy and the descendants
of its victims".
These statements paved the way for the first
compensation paid by the Austrian government to the
survivors of the holocaust. In June 1995, the Austrian
parliament authorised an allocation of $50 million
payable to survivors (not necessarily Jewish), each
individual to receive a sum of 70,000 schillings, or
US$7,000.