VANCOUVER -- Austrian businessmen Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and Otto Pick transferred ownership of their sugar refinery to a Swiss bank for safekeeping shortly before fleeing the Nazis in March, 1938. Months later, the bank actively co-operated in the sale of the Jewish businessmen's shares in the sugar refinery to a Nazi purchaser at a small fraction of their value and without the businessmen's consent. After 67 years, the theft of the sugar refinery, which provided 20 per cent of Austria's sugar before the war, had become a piece of family folklore only vaguely remembered by some of the descendants. But in...
