-> SNETNEWS Mailing List
(sent to USCMike1's 30,153+ readers - please repost this to you own mailing
lists)
Dear Citizens, Patriots, Veterans, et al.:
Please read Mario's post regarding the background of Secretary of State
Albright
USCMike1
Subj: Jana Korbel aka Madeline Albright
Date: 3/29/99 1:05:00 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mario Borsellino)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mike Johnson)
I suggest that you pass this on. The more people that know the whole
truth and the background of all these scumbags "in charge", the
better!! Mario
The link to the below article is:
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/Sunday-Times/frontpage.html?3343298
THE SUNDAY TIMES UK
March 28 UNITED STATES
Albright's father 'took war
loot to America'
by Matthew Campbell, Washington
A WEALTHY Austrian family is threatening legal action
against Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of
state, in an acrimonious row over a priceless collection of
paintings and antiques that has its roots in the chaotic
aftermath of the second world war.
In a hitherto unpublicized dispute, descendants of Karl
Nebrich, an Austrian industrialist, claim that Albright's
father, Josef Korbel, a former Czech foreign ministry
official who was Jewish, stole millions of dollars' worth of
art and furniture from them, then fled with it and his family
to America at the end of the war.
Tired of endless brush-offs from an American lawyer
acting for John Korbel, Albright's brother, Nebrich's heirs
are considering legal proceedings to reclaim the property -
including a collection of old masters - in what risks
becoming an embarrassing distraction for America's first
female secretary of state.
"I cannot believe the American secretary of state enjoys
eating with my family's silver," Philip Harmer, a
great-grandson of Nebrich, said last week. "These things
must be handed over to my family."
Albright fled from Nazism and then Stalinism as a child and
has cited these events as having shaped her world view.
After escaping to London when the Germans marched into
Prague in 1939, her family returned to the Czech capital in
1945, when Albright was eight. They found that several of
the family's Jewish relatives who had stayed behind had
died in concentration camps. A luxurious first-floor flat at
11 Hradsanke Street in Prague was assigned to Albright's
father as a reward for his services to the Czech foreign
ministry. It had been expropriated from the Nebriches,
who, although not members of the Nazi party, had lived
comfortably as citizens of the Reich during the war but then
found themselves out of favour with the Czech authorities
when the war ended.
The Nebriches allege that Korbel took possession of
paintings, silver and antique furniture, though these were
not included in the expropriation order. "He took the lot,
even the nails from the wall," said Doris Renner, a daughter
of Nebrich. When Korbel was appointed ambassador to
Yugoslavia, he moved his family - and, allegedly, the
treasure trove of art - to Belgrade.
Three years later, however, Czechoslovakia's communists
staged a coup and Korbel, an opponent of the
communists, was in danger. The family fled to America,
where he became a professor at the University of Denver.
The Nebrich family tried for decades to track a "Dr
Korbel" in America. But it was not until 1996, when
Albright - then America's ambassador to the United
Nations - revisited her childhood home in Prague and
spoke of her happy memories, that the Nebrich family
realised she was Korbel's daughter.
Harmer, acting for Nebrich's two surviving children -
Renner, his great-aunt, and Ruth Harmer, his grandmother
- began bombarding Albright's office with faxes, letters and
lists of items allegedly taken by Korbel. Among them were
20 paintings - including one by Tintoretto, the Venetian
master, and one by Andrea del Sarto, another of the most
important artists of the 16th century.
"You lived in our flat as an eight-year-old child and I am
sure you will remember some of the paintings mentioned on
the attached list," Harmer wrote to Albright in February
1997. He suggested a meeting. The response was not
promising. "You may wish to raise this matter with the
government of the Czech Republic," a State Department
official wrote back.
After more faxes from Harmer, Albright handed the file to
John Korbel, her younger brother. Michael Jaffe, his
lawyer, wrote to Harmer in October, 1997, saying: "There
is no basis whatever for thinking that any artworks of the
late Ambassador Korbel came to him improperly."
Undeterred, Harmer flew to Washington last year to see
the lawyer. "Essentially he said we have no case and
warned us not to make a noise since this powerful woman
is involved," Harmer alleged.
The lawyer declined to discuss the case last week and
Korbel, who works for the accounting firm Price
Waterhouse Coopers in Arlington, Virginia, was
unavailable for comment.
Harmer is considering taking Albright, Korbel and their
sister, Kathy, to court. He was heartened recently by
Korbel's reported acknowledgment to a journalist writing a
biography of Albright that at least some works on the
Nebrich list belong either to him or to Kathy. None of the
paintings is believed to be hanging in Albright's home in
Georgetown, Washington.
Harmer said the family believed that Korbel Sr might have
sold some of the paintings to finance his start in America.
"We accept that Josef Korbel's children are not
responsible for their father's activities," he wrote in another
fax to Korbel's lawyer last week. "However," "we
definitely expected them to list any items honestly and to
hand them over."
Renner says she recalls Josef Korbel arguing that he was
entitled to take the Nebriches' belongings as compensation
for having lost everything to the Nazis.
"All his relatives died in concentration camps," she said last
week from her home on the shores of Lake Wolfgang near
Salzburg. "That is very sad. But it doesn't justify him taking
everything from us."
-> Send "subscribe snetnews " to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-> Posted by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
