Awful Austria
Sir: Having been away, I have only now caught up with the Austrian minister's comments (Letters 27, August) on my review of some books about his country. He writes that 'within days after the Anschluss, about 70,000 of the country's political elite whether Christian Democrats or Socialists or Communists, were in- carcerated.' Post-war estimates of 70,000 'appear exaggerated' in the words of the historian Radomir V. Luza (The Resistance in Austria 1936-1945), but in any case the minister is conveniently omitting to say that the huge majority incarcerated were Jews, not German Austrians at all. Luza reports that on 28 August 1938 the Vienna Gestapo held 2,732 prisoners, of whom 2,044 were Jews, an indication of the proportion of Jews to non-Jews.
The minister goes on to refer to the 134,000 post-war de-Nazification tribunals and to claim that these proved that Austria was accepting moral obligations towards its victims. Conveniently he again omits to say that these de-Nazification tribunals were the result of allied judicial and political measures, conceded by Austria through force majeur. Since independence in 1955 Austria has made no serious effort to bring its war criminals to justice. In a memoran- dum in April 1967, Simon Wiesenthal showed that of 1,100 Austrians then alive and directly implicated in mass murder, just two were in prison. Since then, efforts to bring to trial war criminals have.all been blocked.
As for the money which the minister says has been paid to victims, it is a fraction of the total seized from the Jews, which was no less than three billion reichsmarks or $1.2 billion at 1938 values. Austria as a country, and many individual Austrians, have profiteered enormously by retaining a variety of assets whose owners had been killed. Of details of this refusal to restitute stolen property, the minister might care to consult Robert Knight's documentation Ich bin dafur die Sache in der Lange zu ziehan, a work which did not find an Austrian publisher. The minister's letter is a fine example of the truth-fudging which has turned his country and its officials into so sad a spectacle.
David Pryce-Jones
1 Phillimore Terrace, London W8
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