Press release   The Historical Commission's mission The mission with which the Commission has been entrusted is to investigate and report about the whole complex of "expropriation in the territory of the Republic of Austria during the Nazi era as well as restitution and/or compensation (including economic and social benefits) by the Republic of Austria after 1945". Members of the Commission The Commission consists of six members. It is chaired by the President of the Austrian Administrative Court, Professor Clemens Jabloner. Dr. Brigitte Bailer-Galanda and Professor Lorenz Mikoletzky, Director-General of the State Archives, have been elected deputy chairpersons. The other members of the Commission are Dr. Robert Knight, Loughborough, UK, Dr. Bertrand Perz, Vienna, and Professor Roman Sandgruber, Linz. One of the decisions of the Commission's constituent session was to ask Permanent Experts to participate in its work. They are Professor Georg Graf, Salzburg, Professor Karl Stuhlpfarrer, Vienna, and Professor Alice Teichova, Cambridge, UK. The Commission's terms of reference The members of the Commission believe that the purpose of their work is to help as many people as possible to understand a number of difficult and sensitive problems of Austria's recent history. The Commission will also help to prepare the ground for legal steps and to support their acceptance. But it would be a misunderstanding to make political decisions entirely dependent on the Commission's findings. Political decisionmakers have here and now every possibility to enter into a dialogue with various groups of victims and thus to continue a process the most recent evidence of which has been the setting up of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism. Archives and sources The Commission's findings will depend on what files and dossiers exist and on their accessibility. Essential documents must not be barred to researchers or secreted. Hence the Commission's most urgent requirement is for all materials, wherever they are, which are relevant to its subject matter to be laid open. In view of certain unconfirmed press reports, the Commission insists that any contractual agreements between any agencies concerned and third parties, such as the CA Bank, must not lead to any impairment of the Commission's access to sources.     State of research and themes The state of research in the Commission's various fields is extremely diverse. In some sub-areas, extensive research will be necessary to discover whether and to what extent property was confiscated and whether this in fact happened in the territory of the Republic of Austria. In other fields, it will be enough to summarise existing research, with some small complements.