If there is a link between the Austrian problems & POG?:
Paris, Monday, February 14, 2000
A Nazi-Era Property Deal Returns to Haunt Austrian Politics
Haider and a Jewish Claim / 'Valley of the Bears'
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By Peter S. Green International Herald Tribune
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VIENNA - Deep in the mountains of Austria's rural southern Carinthia region, the Baerental forest extends over 1,600 hectares. It is prime timber and hunting land that has helped build the fortune of its owner, the governor of Carinthia and the leader of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party, Joerg Haider.
But the Jewish family that was forced to sell the 'Valley of the Bears' on the eve of World War II, in a murky transaction involving Mr. Haider's relatives and blocked bank accounts, says the sale was illegal and immoral. Now, the family wants justice.
'Haider got rich selling my family's wood, and he is in power now with the help of my money,' said Naomi Merhav, the 73-year old daughter of Giorgio Roifer, whose land Mr. Haider now owns.
Amid international concern that he is whitewashing Austria's World War II collaboration with Nazi Germany, Mr. Haider began a political offensive last week, promising to 'take pertinent measures' where Austria has 'inflicted great injustice on our Jewish fellow citizens or wiped out their families.'
The question of how Mr. Haider obtained the Baerental goes to the same issue, but also points up the ambiguity of Nazi-era transactions and the difficulty of dealing with present-day claims.
'Austria has had one of the worst records on restitution of any country in Europe, and the origin of Haider's own property underscores the need to be concerned about Haider's position on restitution,' said Richard Chesnoff, author of the recent book 'Pack of Thieves,' about the Nazi theft of Jewish property across Europe.
In 1938, as fascism began to spread across Europe, Nazi Germany, which by then included Austria, began confiscating the property of Jews and others. Under the Nuremberg laws, Jews were forbidden to own property in the Reich. Land, homes, paintings and other valuables were 'Aryanized' and 'de-Jewified' - the terminology of the day - and given to racially pure Nazi party members.
The Roifers' lush forest was an attractive property, and several Nazi officials wanted the land. But the Roifers were citizens of Italy, an ally of Hitler's, and it was only when the Creditanstalt bank in Vienna abruptly and for unclear reasons foreclosed on a long-term loan to Mr. Roifer, an Italian Jewish timber merchant from Pisa, that the family was forced to sell, according to Austrian press reports, court documents and Nazi-era records.
Mr. Roifer came to Austria, but died before he was able to sell the woods to a friendly local businessman named Max Goetz.
Mr. Roifer's widow, Mathilde, asked her brother to try to sell the land to Mr. Goetz, and then fled to Palestine with her three children. But Mr. Haider's great-great-uncle, Josef Webhofer, a local Nazi official, intervened, and the Roifer family sold him the land at what the family says was a fraction of its value. The deal was closed in 1941.
A Haider associate sued an Austrian magazine that wrote about the case in 1986. The suit was over a separate issue, on which he won. But Judge Doris Treib wrote in her opinion that the way the Roifer family lost the land was 'clearly scandalous.'
'It is quite clear that this Mrs. Roifer was deprived of this property by coercion,' she wrote.
Evidence to this effect included a notation by a Nazi forestry official in Vienna that the legal documents authorizing the sale were not valid. On the back of the power of attorney papers, he had written that the power of attorney of 'the Jewish seller,' Mrs. Roifer, had expired.
But in twisted legal language that circumvented this problem he added that 'at the request of the buyer Josef Webhofer,' a lawyer named Heinz Bruenner would be unilaterally designated as an 'intermediary for the further selling of the forested estate.'
Mrs. Merhav contends that without a valid power of attorney, the original sale of the Baerental to Mr. Webhofer was invalid.
In October 1940, Mr. Webhofer bought the Baerental for 300,000 German Reichmarks, equivalent to only a few years' income from the land. The Creditanstalt loan was paid off, and in a common Nazi-era practice of further restricting Jews' access to their property, the remaining money went to a blocked bank account in Italy that Mrs. Roifer's relatives could not touch. By the end of the war, inflation had whittled it down to nothing.
'The sum that was paid was peanuts,' Mrs. Merhav, a retired museum curator, said in a recent interview from her home in Israel.
After the war, Mrs. Roifer returned to Austria to seek compensation, but the courts refused her. Only in 1954 did she get anything from Mr. Webhofer for her family's land.
'My mother succeeded in getting something that is worth today about $120,000,' Mrs. Merhav said. (cont)
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