JEWS IN ITALY

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 103, 25 January 1939, Page 7

JEWS IN ITALY

Loss Of Property Rights

REDUCING THEM TO

POVERTY

Investigation into the amount of real estate and landed property held

by Jews is going on all over Italy preparatory to the enforcement of the recent decree-laws limiting I heir

investments in this field, said the Rome correspondent of the "Sunday Times,” London, recently.

These decrees specified that Jews might not own lands which paid a tax of more than 5600 lire, or urban factories which paid a total tax of more than 20,000 lire. The methods of relieving them of surplus property are being worked out by the Ministries of

Finance, Interior, Justice. Corporations and Trade and Exchange, and will be framed in decrees in due time. It. is obvious that Jews will not be allowed to dispose of their property in the open market, for the bottom would fall out of it. Neither can they very well transfer it into industrial holdings, for the same sequence of decrees also forbade them to own shares of any company engaged in national defence work or of any company of any other sort which employed more than 100 men. Here again there will have to be a vast liquidation of Jewish shareholdings far greater than the Bourse can handle, and Government, measures will have to be devised to absorb these offerings. It is suggested in financial quarters that both problems will be solved by means of tin issue of bonds which will be given Jews in exchange tor their surrendered property. More or less of a precedent for this exists in the arrangements made for the levies ou landed property and business generally which have been imposed in the past two years. This seems (he more likely in that Government bonds are the only medium of investment which in practice is left open to the Jews, as the amount of small-business stock available must be very small. From the Government’s point of view, it would have the advantage that Jewish resources would henceforth be known and easily accessible, while the machinery for gradual liquidation or absorption of expropriated land and securities already exists.

Estimates of Property. The papers arc now beginning to carry estimates of Jewish housing property and real estate which would put the "total in the neighbourhood of 5000 million lire. In Rome there are believed to be about. 500 Jewish house or apartment owners, whose property totals something like 1200 million lire. The great majority of these, however, are merely owners of the flat in which they live," and it is not believed that very 7 many have extensive housing property. In Milan it is estimated that 90 per cent, of the Jews there will be found to be below the permissible maximum so far as the city itself is concerned, though many of them own small villas outside. 'The value of their property is placed at about 1000 million lire. In Turin the ownership of about 1000 million lire worth of property is spread over 400 Jews, but in this case a small number are believed to have control of a heavy proportion of it. At Ferrara the Jewish holdings are merely described as “huge," and are said to amount to 22 per cent, of building values in the centre of the city. In Genoa, on the other hand, most of the 2000 Jews have small property holdings', and it is not thought that there would be a very large surplus to be dealt with. Venice and Trieste account for most of the rest. Whether or not the transfers of property are made without serious loss to the Jews, they lose by the ban on directorships and managerships of large concerns which has also been applied. It is obvious that they are being reduced to a condition of economic and financial impotence in the country: their direct political influence was long ago done away with. But along with restrictions which, even if not subsequently reinforced, will prevent them from enlarging their possessions, go others which demand from them greater expenditure than hitherto.

This is notably the case with education. Though the Government is preparing special elementary schools or classrooms for Jewish children it does not propose to do anything about higher education, arrangements for which must be financed by the Jewish community itself. In the long run, given the age-old tendency of money to depreciate in value, limitation of the Jews’ opportunities for increasing their wealth will, in itself condemn them to a gradually shrinking financial status, slow-moving but inexorable.