An Israeli whose grandfather once owned Mr Jorg Haider's $16 million estate in the Tyrol yesterday urged the Freedom Party leader to "return the property" to his family.
Mr Neri Merhav's grandfather, Giorgio Roifer, purchased the Barental estate in 1937, but the family was forced to sell it three years later under Nazi Aryanisation laws. If Mr Haider wanted to prove that he was misunderstood, "and that he is in fact a liberal", said Mr Merhav, he should correct the injustice that led to his acquiring the property.
The Roifer family sold the estate in 1940 for 300,000 Reichsmarks - the equivalent of $1.2 million today, and far below its actual value. Josef Webhofer subsequently left it to his son, who in turn gave it to Mr Haider, his great-nephew, as a gift in 1986.
Mr Roifer's descendants said in the past that they had no legal claim to the estate, especially as the Webhofers made a second payment of $100,000 in the 1950s. But now the family is starting to change its tune.
The family is arguing that the initial sale was made under duress, that it was negotiated by a relative who did not have the legal right to do so, and that the Webhofers failed to apprise them of this in 1953 when requiring Mr Roifer's widow, Matilde, to waive all further claims.