Report: Holocaust compensation group withheld over a billion Euros from Jewish survivors

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, set up to restitute Jewish property, did not return all the funds it received from the German government to their Jewish owners or their heirs, a new report has found.

Ralph Falkenburg, of the United States, tried for years to find details of his eligibility to receive compensation for a business and properties is family had in Germany before the Holocaust. In 2008 Falkenburg found that the Claims Conference had received 700,000 euros from Germany for his family’s business and properties.

	Flowers for the victims of the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz are seen on a railway track during ceremonies marking the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by Soviet troops.
	Photo by: Reuters

But all his attempts to receive information from the Claims Conference were in vain and his demand to expose the documents regarding his family’s property were rejected. Falkenburg died in July without receiving a single euro of his family’s fortune.

This is just one case of a number of incidents in which the conference did not act with complete transparency to help claimants apply for compensation, before allocating funds to other purposes, according to a report recently submitted to the Board of Deputies of British Jews by leading barrister Jeffrey Gruder.

Gruder says at least 1.2 billion euros the conference had received from Germany in money and properties was not returned to the owners or their heirs.

Gruder, who was commissioned by the Board of Deputies to examine the conference’s operations, says the conference did not hold the money for the owners or their heirs, but allocated it to other purposes.

“It is inherently unlikely that there are no surviving owners or heirs in respect of all the 1.2-1.4 billion euros received by the Claims Conference ‏(up to December 31, 2008‏) and not paid to owners or heirs or set aside under the provisions of the Goodwill Fund,” Gruder said in the report.

Gruder carried out the examination and wrote the report voluntarily.

Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies, told Haaretz “for years there were complaints about the sums the conference received and the way it distributed them. We wondered if sufficient efforts were made to trace heirs and to compensate them.”

The Claims Conference was set up in 1951 by 24 Jewish organizations to negotiate with the German government on compensation for Holocaust survivors and their heirs. The conference chairman is Julius Berman and it’s executive committee chairman is Reuven Merhav.

In 1990 Germany enacted a law stipulating that Jewish property expropriated by the Communist regime or confiscated and sold by the Nazis would be returned to its owners or their heirs. Applications for compensation could be submitted until June 1993.

Unclaimed funds have been passed over the years to organizations for Holocaust survivors’ welfare and to support Holocaust studies.

The Claims Conference website says that by the end of 2008 it received 2.059 billion euros from Germany. After eight months of research, Gruder concluded the conference was holding more than 1.2 billion euros intended for property owners or their heirs.

The conference refused to address this argument, saying “the Goodwill Fund [set up by the conference] had paid the heirs or put aside 704 million euros for specific claims.”

The Goodwill Fund was established in 1994 to transfer funds to survivors and their heirs who did not file applications to the German government. The fund transferred 554 million euros to property owners and their heirs until 1998, then closed. It reopened for six months at the end of 2003. The conference also allocated 70 million euros to future claims and 80 million euros for “other uses.”

The report says 704 million euros were designated to property owners and their heirs, leaving 1.35 billion euros from Germany unclaimed.

Gruder wrote that it is evident the conference plans to make use of funds raised to finance plans to help survivors and various cultural and educational programs.

“One can see possible moral and ethical problems in using funds derived from property where the heirs were alive but unable to claim due to lack of information, in order to provide financial assistance to third parties,” Gruder wrote.

Claism conference official Noah Flug told Israel Radio in 2003: “Most of the money from selling property with no heirs is sometimes returned to heirs of third, fourth and fifth degree − many cases are dubious.”

Recently he said the conference’s “handling the applications is proper and worthy.”

In October 2003 the Goodwill Fund issued a list of surnames and cities. A few months later the list was taken off the conference site. In 2008 another list, consisting of properties but no names, was issued. The lists, with no cross reference, did not make it easier for claimants to apply for compensation. Since the fund closed down the claimants have no one to turn to.

The conference responded that “in 2003 we issued a list of Jewish property owners from East Germany whose property was returned. This was part of a last effort to trace heirs. In 2008 the conference released a list of 11,513 properties from East Germany that were returned and sold by the organization, and the sums received for each property.”

The fund was intended to assist needy Holocaust survivors, the conference said. Despite this, a third of the income was paid to heirs and property owners or earmarked for specific claims.

“The conference could have used all the money to help survivors ... or hold all the funds indefinitely for potential claimants, rather than look after survivors who needed food, medicines and care, as it does,” the conference said in a statement. “For the past 16 years the conference has tried to balance the two interests.”