NEW YORK, Jan 1: Shortly after Anne Frank and her family were apprehended in their Amsterdam home in 1944, neighbours entered the house and stole all the furniture, a World Jewish Congress (WJC) report asserts.The 29-page report, which will be officially released next week, details the wartime property loss suffered by Jews in Netherlands and Austria, and is intended to lay the groundwork for possible discussions of property restitution in those countries.In the case of Netherlands, the report details how it was common practice for neighbours to enter into the homes of Jews rounded up by the occupying German Army.This included the house where Frank and her family were hiding. Frank wrote a diary about her experiences as a young girl in hiding that was translated into 30 languages and spawned a play currently on Broadway. She died in a concentration camp. Like her, some 80 percent of Dutch Jews perished during the war.As a result of thefts of Jewish property, the report says, ``Dutch citizens and the Dutch state possess - to this very day - a considerable amount of property, which can be valued at tens of millions of dollars, which belonged to Dutch Jews who were murdered and who left no living heirs.''In Austria, for example, the report states that some 1,28,000 books belonging to Jews were confiscated. Many of those books currently reside in the libraries of the Austrian chancellor, the Parliament, the Albertine Museum in Vienna, and in universities.The report estimates that the aggregate Jewish property losses in Austria would total roughly 10 billion dollars in today's values. ``Austria has returned communal property, like synagogues, to the Jewish community. But it has done little to return heirless property,'' said WJC executive director Elan Steinberg.The thousands of books currently located in state libraries, says the report, are just one example of unreturned property that once belonged to Austria's Jewish community, which numbered 1,85,000 before the war.In 1996, Austria agreed to an auction off thousands of stolen art works - known as the Mauerbach collection - that had once belonged to Jews. The proceeds were donated to the local Jewish community.By offering details and examples of how items seized from Jewish homes during World War II still remain in possession of public institutions or individuals, the WJC is hoping to persuade European governments not to close discussions on restitution.By pressing Swiss banks on the issue of dormant bank accounts during the last two years, for example, the WJC reopened restitution talks with Switzerland. Those talks resulted in the establishment of a 194 million dollar fund for Holocaust survivors.
