The Prague Post Online: News: Claims process launched in Israel

September 8th, 2008

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Claims process launched in Israel

Czechs are among the thousands stripped of pre-WWII assets

By Lisa Nuch Venbrux
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 11th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO

A circa-1940 photo shows a beach near Haifa and boats used by Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Europe. enlarge

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

Tomáš Jelínek says "a few hundred" Czechs may be eligible. enlarge

In 2000, Czech Jewish communities celebrated with counterparts worldwide as Swiss banks agreed to return the assets of Holocaust victims to survivors and heirs. The victory was hailed as a milestone after years of grueling reparations battles across Europe.

As the celebrations cooled, another struggle was just starting to heat up in another part of the world. The country in question had appropriated money and property from thousands of European Jews. Those claiming rights to accounts were turned away at the doors of its banks.

Now those claims are finally being heard in the state that many say dragged its heels for far too long — Israel.

“It’s certainly not an honor for the state of Israel that it took 70 years to start to work,” says Avraham Roet, chairman of the board at the Company for Locating and Retrieving Assets of People who were Killed in the Holocaust. “If we require [restitution] from other countries, the Jewish state should do the same.”

That company, created by the Israeli government in August 2006, launched a Web site June 20 that opens the door for Holocaust survivors and heirs to claim assets held by Israel. The site, www.hashava.org.il, allows anyone to search accounts and apply to have assets returned to them.

“We got more than 1,000 applications within a week,” Roet says.

Though the precise number of accountholders from Czechoslovakia is unknown, Tomáš Jelínek, former head of the Prague Jewish Community, says “a few hundred” Czechs may be eligible to make claims.

The total value of assets held by the state of Israel has been a matter of dispute, but may reach up to INS 1 billion ($238.7 million/5 billion Kč).

The Web site launch is the beginning of the end to seven years of wrangling among Jewish communities, Israeli banks and the Knesset, the parliament of Israel.

But the roots of this struggle date further back, to the late 1930s.

Planting roots in Palestine

Before World War II, some European Jews, alarmed by the continued rise of the Third Reich, deposited money in banks in British-controlled Palestine in anticipation of moving there.

“They had to produce proof they had some means of support, so typically they deposited money in a Palestinian bank,” explains Antonín Hradílek, deputy chief of mission at the Czech Embassy in Tel Aviv.

Though Czechoslovaks were not exactly the “enemy” of the allies, their status as citizens under German-occupied territories meant they were classified as enemies to Britain under the Trading with the Enemy Ordinance laid out by the British Government in Palestine in 1939. Enemy properties there were then seized by the British government.

After the war ended and Israel was created, these accounts were passed largely to the Israeli government.

“Legally, the money belongs to Israel, because it was legally taken by the British and was transferred to the state of Israel,” Hradílek says. “So it’s not a legal problem. It’s a moral problem.”

Attempts to straighten this twist in history started with the Knesset Inquiry Committee on the Location and Restitution of Assets (in Israel) of Victims of the Holocaust, created in 2000 and chaired by Member of Knesset (MK) Colette Avital.

By 2005, the committee, which Jelínek says “should be praised for its work,” had audited five (sometimes uncooperative) Israeli banks and pushed through legislation allowing the return of assets. The Knesset also created a search function on its Web site so survivors and heirs could find names on some accounts, though the names listed are limited and apply only to bank accounts.

The newly launched site administered by the Company for Locating and Retrieving Assets of People who were Killed in the Holocaust also deals with, for instance, deeds for land and works of art, Roet says. It also represents an attempt to streamline an often painful and difficult claims process.

Burdens of proof

Tomáš Kraus, executive director of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic, has been part of the vanguard fighting for restitution on multiple fronts.

“We were the very first to start the negotiations with local authorities about restitution,” Kraus says, noting that discussions about restitution issues between the Czech Jewish communities and the state began as early as 1991.

Having dealt with such cases for 15 years, he is plainly aware of the challenges. “Not only in this case [with Israel], but in every restitution case, the burden of proof is on the victim,” he says.

This becomes a problem as people are forced to confront long-buried memories or emotions. Even when the process becomes too difficult to deal with, “in the end, they have to,” he laments. Not only that, claims can take decades and sometimes the result is unsuccessful. “So in a way, it’s very unjust.”

That’s partly why Roet is striving to simplify the claims process.

“It’s a problem to find all the [legal] heirs of one Holocaust victim,” he says. Banks’ requests for legal documents have frustrated claimants in the past, most notoriously in the Swiss case when banks demanded death certificates, impossible to produce for victims of concentration camps.

Roet says that while claimants must show they are really relatives, the company will also take responsibility to locate heirs and itself find evidence. Furthermore, he says, the company plans to move as quickly as it can within its 15-year mandate.

“I think we should try to work as fast as possible, because a lot of the people who applied are at a very high age,” Roet says.

If no heirs are found for some accounts and properties, an inevitability in Holocaust restitution cases, the property will pass to a fund to care for Holocaust survivors, many of whom “are not in the best condition,” according to Kraus.

Currently, the company’s Web site is only available in Hebrew, but an English version will launch this month. Claimants can fill in a form online or by post. People may also call a telephone number, available in Hebrew, English, Russian or Spanish for information and help (more languages will be added).

In about a month, Roet and his colleagues will send application forms to the Czech Jewish community and other Jewish communities around the world. He hopes they will take some responsibility for helping broadcast its efforts and translate forms to local languages, though the company plans to publicize its efforts through Web sites. He emphasizes that the public company operates independently of the Israeli government.

In what appears to be the final stretch of a lengthy struggle, some Czech Jewish leaders seem optimistic about a resolution. “Where else than Israel should there be mutual understanding?” Kraus asks.

Roet, meanwhile, sees the crux of the issue stretching far beyond individuals and Israel. “[This is] for the general good and not for the good of governments, and not for private people,” he says. “It’s a moral obligation.”

— Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Lisa Nuch Venbrux can be reached at lvenbrux@praguepost.com

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