Still
no full restitution to
looted Jews in Austria
By
Jonathan
Power
October 10, 2003
VIENNA - Five years ago there was a headline in the
International Herald Tribune, "Austria to Start Returning
Artwork Looted by the Nazis". The article beneath,
reporting on a promise made by the Austrian government in
a statement to parliament, came exactly 53 years and 7
months after the defeat of the Nazi Reich. But today, 58
years on, the change at best can be said to have been
incremental. Much of Austria still buries its head in the
sand, convinced to its bone that it was a "victim" of
Hitler, not in fact a co-conspirator as the rest of the
world knows it was, and most of the art and other looted
artifacts and wealth remains unreturned.
In 1999 the distinguished Austrian writer, Hubertus
Czernin, whose previous work had exposed the unsavory war
record of Kurt Waldheim, who had been both UN secretary
general and president of Austria, and the disgraced
Cardinal of Vienna, Hans Hermann Groer, who had to step
down because of accusations of homosexual offenses,
published a book on the Nazi looting of Austrian art. One
chapter was the story of the late banker Alphonse Thorsch
who died in exile in Canada in 1945. Thorsch was
enormously rich- of the Jewish families living in Vienna
before the Nazis came to power second only to the
Rothschild's. His house was a palace of 60 rooms
and his desk was that of the former first minister
Metternich. In March 1938 the National Socialists stormed
in, turfed out the occupants and confiscated the house,
the paintings, carpets, jewels and, most important, the
bank.
Nineteen pictures were restored to the family in 1949;
one more followed in 1952. But most have not been. Since
the family couldn't say where the art was or where the
capital of the bank was transferred to, the government
has argued that the family "is not in a legal position to
demand restitution". Cabinet papers have revealed that
earlier post war governments decided in favor of
"dragging this matter out". When I interviewed Thorsch's
granddaughter, Angela Hartig, last week she was about to
put up one of the paintings she did own for auction, in
an effort to maintain the still elegant, if much reduced,
style of family life.
That the Thorsch family is still well to do by most
standards is not the point because their story is the
same story as tens of thousands of other Jewish families.
And 90% of those who should have benefited from
restitution are now dead. Of those who remain few have
the will, determination and indeed the financial
resources to keep on fighting. In the U.S. lawyers,
working on the basis of payment on results, are still
attempting to pressure the U.S. government to use its
muscle to intervene, as it did with the notorious case of
the Swiss banks who belatedly agreed three years ago on a
settlement to indemnify Holocaust survivors and heirs for
their dormant accounts (but still have only met a tiny
number of claims). At the onset the banks had said there
were only 8,000 accounts linked to victims. When the case
was settled they admitted the actual figure was
50,000.
Austria, as John Kenneth Galbraith has argued, has
been post war Western society's most successful economy
with not only a good growth record but a benign
distribution of income. Nevertheless, politically and
morally it has been seriously schizophrenic about its
Nazi past.
In her book "Guilty Victim" Austrian-born Hella Pick,
a former diplomatic editor of the British Guardian
newspaper, argues that one of the central themes running
through Austrian history is "the big lie"- "the self
deception that has prompted many Austrians to assert that
the country could not be held responsible for the Nazi
persecution of Austrian Jews because Austria became
Hitler's first victim". Only in 1991 was this discarded
as official doctrine. Then Chancellor Franz Vranitzsky
realized that the crisis that had been triggered by the
emergence of Waldheim's war record should be used to
prise open the collective amnesia of the Austrian people.
He made a path breaking statement to parliament in which
for the first time Austria's guilt was publicly
acknowledged. He finally admitted that many Austrians had
supported Hitler and had been instrumental in Nazi
crimes.
There is, belatedly, a holocaust memorial in Vienna.
Simon Wiesenthal, the world famous Nazi hunter, once
reviled in his home country, has now been heaped with
honors. Some pictures, some property and other looted art
works have been returned. But none of the $360 million
promised by the government to Jewish survivors has been
dispensed and the big claims simply gather dust. As the
Thorsch case makes clear the road to go is still a long
one. Outside pressure and outside scrutiny is the only
thing that has ever produced results in Austria and
although, nearly 60 years later, it is easier to
just forget and let bygones be bygones that would destroy
our credibility for facing down evil in the future .
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2003 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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