Decision no. WA5/2009

In March 1938, the property, with an area of approximately 2,000 m² and which was owned by the City of Vienna on the cut off day 17 January 2001, was owned by the spouses Gedalie and Ida N. The N. spouses, who were persecuted as Jews after the Anschluss, fled with their children Alfred and Mathilde to France where they were later arrested and deported to various prisons and camps. Gedalie N. and his wife Ida survived the National Socialist Regime and returned to Vienna after the war.

In August 1942, the property reverted to the German Reich on the basis of the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law. As a result, the administration of the seized property, including the property at issue, fell to the Chief Finance President Vienna.

On 19 January 1948, the Financial Directorate for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland restituted the property to the aggrieved owners pursuant to the provisions of the Erste Rückstellungsgesetz (“First Restitution Act”). In January 1951, Gedalie and Ida N. sold the property to Franziska B., who later sold the property into public ownership.

In both the first proceedings before the Arbitration Panel and in the application for a re-opening, the applicant Mathilde F. – the daughter of the former owner – was of the opinion that the restitution in 1948 had constituted an “extreme injustice”, particularly with regard to the loss of earnings and the bad condition of the restituted property. Furthermore, the National Socialist regime had lodged tenants in the property who had neither paid rent nor taxes. The property taxes had been paid by the parents of the applicant, despite not having been able to use the property themselves from 1938 to 1951.

The Arbitration Panel rejected the application for a re-opening and reiterated in its present decision that the claim asserted before the Arbitration Panel had already been granted in 1948 and therefore a renewed restitution cannot be pronounced. The submitted property damage cannot be compensated  by a (renewed restitution) of the seized property but instead falls under the scope of application of part 1 of the Entschädigungsfondsgesetz (“General Settlement Fund Law”). In this respect, the applicant had already been awarded compensation for the loss of earnings between 1938 and 1945 by the Claims Committee of the General Settlement Fund in December 2007.

The Arbitration Panel therefore reached the conclusion that present statements submitted by the applicant could not result in a change to the legal findings of decision no. 382/2007, particularly as no new evidence had been submitted.