Most stolen Jewish WWII property 'still missing'
Only one-fifth of the property that was stolen from Europe's Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators has ever been returned, with at least $115bn (€88.69bn) in assets still missing, according to a new study.
Many Western European governments paid restitution for only a fraction of the stolen property, investments, businesses and household items, while Eastern European countries under Soviet control paid almost nothing at all, according to the study, which was obtained yesterday by The Associated Press.
Even the highly publicised campaigns over the past decade for a new wave of compensation barely made a dent in the problem, said the study, compiled by economist Sidney Zabludoff, a former CIA and US Treasury official.
Elan Steinberg, a former executive director of World Jewish Congress who helped spearhead the 1990s push for Holocaust restitution, said he was "shocked, but not surprised" by the study's figures and called for a rapid resolution to the problem for the benefit of destitute, elderly Holocaust survivors.
"This is an extraordinary finding and what makes it most tragic is that despite the efforts at restitution, we have so many Holocaust survivors at the end of their days … who are not being taken care of," he said.
Zabludoff's study showed that before the Holocaust, Jews owned property in Europe that was worth between 10bn (€7.71bn) and $15bn (€11.6bn) at the time.
Most of that was never repaid, translating into a missing $115bn (€88.69bn) to $175bn (€135bn) in current prices, the study said.
The new study will appear in the April issue of the Jewish Political Studies Review, a journal published by the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, an Israeli think tank.
It documents a 60-year history of neglect in efforts to obtain restitution for Holocaust victims, despite laws passed in many European countries during and after the Second World War mandating compensation, Zabludoff said.
Most of the assets eventually restored to survivors and Jewish organisations - about 15% of the total taken - were recovered in the years immediately following the war, he said.
A major obstacle to restitution was the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, where the majority of Jewish property had been held before the war, he said. Recovery rates were also hurt by a tremendous devaluation in the German currency after the war that left Jews with compensation for little more than 10% of their stolen property, the study said. Other Western European governments paid between half and two-thirds of what they owed, it said.
Efforts were further hampered by the difficulty in locating assets, since most of the property owners were killed and their heirs often did not know the details of their holdings, the study said.
The issue of restitution faded in the 1970s, but rose again in the 1990s, most famously when Swiss banks came under criticism from Holocaust survivors for allegedly stealing, concealing or sending to the Nazis millions of dollars worth of Jewish holdings. The banks agreed in 1998 to pay €1.25bn (€964,000) on dormant accounts held by Jewish Holocaust victims.
But Zabludoff found that those later efforts resulted in the return of only an additional 3% of the missing wealth before attention again dissipated.
Mark Stern, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress, hoped the huge amounts cited in the study might inspire some families to pursue compensation.
"I think this will give a renewed impetus to efforts to force governments to account (for stolen property) in a more systematic way than they have until now," he said.
Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, said that the Jewish community will never be fully compensated for the stolen property.
"There will never be justice, only a small measure of justice," he said.
