Liechtenstein saved, turned away WWII Jews

VADUZ, Liechtenstein -- Some 400 Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis found safety in Liechtenstein during World War II, but an unknown number were turned back from the neutral Alpine principality to face likely death, a historical study concluded Wednesday.

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Liechtenstein fared better in the review than neighboring Switzerland in a similar study several years ago, but the report found fault with the principality's royal family.

The family of Liechtenstein's Prince Franz Josef II bought property and art objects taken from Jews in Austria and Czechoslovakia and used Jewish inmates from a Nazi concentration camp near Vienna for forced labor on nearby royal estates, the study said.

"Confronting the past strengthens a country for coming to terms with future problems," said Foreign Minister Ernst Walch at a news conference presenting the results of the four-year study by an international panel.

Sandwiched between neutral Switzerland and Nazi-controlled Austria, Liechtenstein had little room for maneuver, and some influential people in the country sympathized with the Nazis, the report said.

"A few of these individuals were anti-Semitic for ideological reasons, but for economic reasons nevertheless were in favor of admitting Jewish entrepreneurs or naturalizing Jews," the report said.

Unlike Swiss banks, which were accused of holding numerous accounts of people who perished in the Holocaust, investigators could find only one dormant Holocaust account in Liechtenstein banks, the study said.

The owner of the account, whose name was withheld at the family's request, survived a concentration camp and died in Jerusalem in 1949, it said. His daughter has been paid the account balance, recalculated to its present value.

While Switzerland was found to have received gold from the Nazis, including some from concentration camp victims, Liechtenstein banks "did not trade in gold with the Reich," the report said.

The panel of six historians from Israel, Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein noted the tiny principality, whose population in the early 1940s was even smaller than the current 33,000, was only partly independent because it relied on Switzerland for some government functions.

For example, it said, Swiss guards controlled people and goods entering Liechtenstein from Austria, which was part of the Nazi Third Reich starting in 1938.

"Liechtenstein's refugee policy was largely determined by and coordinated with that of Switzerland," the report said.

The Swiss accepted about 27,000 Jewish refugees during the war and turned back a similar number, Swiss historians have said.

Liechtenstein allowed 144 Jews to become citizens "in return for high fees" during the Nazi era, the study said.

"Forcible seizure of Jewish assets -- 'Aryanization' -- and forced labor did not take place in Liechtenstein," the report said. "However, the Princely House bought individual operations or shares from Jewish properties in annexed Austria and German-occupied Czechoslovakia beginning in 1938."