Jewish author remains in Austrian jail

despite discovery of key papers

State documents show Stephan Templ did declare aunts existence in restitution claim for property
stolen by Nazis
Kate Connolly
Saturday 13 February 2016 13.18GMT

A Jewish historian and outspoken critic of Austrias approach to returning property

looted by the Nazis is being kept in jail for defrauding the state over a restitution claim,
despite the discovery of crucial new evidence.
Stephan Templ, 55, was convicted of serious fraud for hiding the existence of an
estranged aunt when he applied on behalf of his mother for the return of a building in
Vienna which was seized from his family in 1938.
But papers found in the state-run offices set up to facilitate the return of properties to
heirs and descendants show that authorities were made aware of the existence of
Elisabeth Kretschmar in 2003.
Representatives of the organisation had testified during Templs trial that they had no
knowledge of his aunt. The judge said Templ had deliberately withheld the information
about her, and in so doing had damaged the Republic of Austria because the aunts
potential one-twelfth share of the building had gone to Templs mother, rather than to
the state.
At the trial there was no discussion about why the onus was on families dispossessed of
their property by the Nazis to prove their right to reclaim it by detailing their own
genealogy.
Templ was sentenced to three years in prison, which was reduced on appeal to one year.
He has been held in Viennas Simmering jail since 15 October.
Leading Holocaust historians condemned his conviction in a strongly worded letter to
the Austrian government.
The documents were discovered in the offices of the General Settlement Fund (GSF) in
central Vienna by Templs legal team on 22 December, three years after they first began
asking to view them.
In the papers seen by the Guardian, Templ noted his aunts name and address on an
application form a total of six times. The GSF is believed to have eventually processed
the documentation in 2006.

After repeated denials and refusals, Mr Templs legal team was eventually granted
access to documents which conclusively prove that the Austrian authorities knew about
his aunt, said Robert Amsterdam, an international lawyer with Amsterdam and
Partners, which is representing Templ on a pro bono basis.
It is outrageous for Austria to claim that Templ hid the existence of his aunt when her
name is mentioned six times in documents submitted by him to the panel.
Amsterdam has filed a petition against Austria on behalf of Templ with the United
Nations human rights council. He is convinced Templs treatment including the states
refusal to release him and launch an investigation in light of the new and crucial
evidence is direct retribution for hisefforts to expose what he describes as the states
woefully inadequate attempts to compensate the Jewish owners of stolen properties.
His 2001 book Unser Wien (Our Vienna) sparked an international furore. It catalogued
hundreds of prominent properties seized by the Nazis that were never returned,
including major Viennese landmarks from the citys famous ferris wheel to luxury
hotels and tailors, as well as the building at the centre of his own claim, the Frth
sanatorium.
The 19th-century villa was a private birth clinic belonging to Lothar Frth, a cousin of
Templs grandmother. A month before its expropriation on 3 April 1938, Frth, the head
of the clinic, and his wife, Sue, were forced by a caretaker to clean the pavement in front
of the building using toothbrushes as an act of humiliation. The couple then retreated to
the operating room at the top of the hospital and injected themselves with poison.
In a suicide note, Frth wrote: We have had enough.
Amsterdam said: From the first look at this case, we thought it was political, and had
nothing to do with the law or a sense of justice, but everything to do with singling out
this Jewish troublemaker.
This case is as good as it gets if youre trying to prove the retribution of the Austrian
system. This entire case is predicated on a legal fiction the state has never been
damaged and its an absolutely historic obscenity for Austria to claim this is the case.
Stefanie Lucas of the GSF said in an email: It is not true that the GSF has known about
the existence of Stephan Templs aunt since 2003.
She said that whenever it examined an application for in rem (a lawsuit against an item
of property) restitution, the arbitration panel consulted all documents in the possession
of the GSF and listed them under evidence in its decision. It goes without saying that
this procedure was also followed for the application of Stephan Templs mother.
She said strict data protection laws (to protect our applicants) prevented her from
giving more detail.
Austrias justice ministry declined to respond to repeated requests for comment.
Templ said by phone from Vienna: The indictment is in tatters, so I dont understand
why they dont release me. Apart from the fact they should never have put the victim of

the [property] theft behind bars in the first place, its now six weeks since this new
evidence came to light and the authorities do nothing. Its further proof of what a farce
the whole case is, as Ive said all along.
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Topics
Austria Second world war Germany Judaism Europe
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