Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> JURIST - The Paper Chase

Legal News

: JURIST - The Paper Chase

Lithuania not increasing Holocaust restitution: justice minister

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] Lithuanian Justice Minister Remigijus Simasius said Tuesday that the country does not plan to increase the amount of restitution it will pay to Jewish Holocaust survivors in the country, according to the Associated Press. The ministry has recommended that approximately $53 million be paid to the country's 5,000 remaining Jews as restitution for property seized by the Nazis during WWII, but Jewish groups have argued that the amount is too small. Simasius said that it would be impossible to restore all property rights lost by the community, but World Jewish Restitution Organization President Ronald Lauder said that the government had arbitrarily ignored many of the properties that his organization had identified as having been taken. The government's plan must be approved by the Lithuanian Parliament later this year, and would provide for restitution payments beginning in 2012. Other European countries have also recently addressed Holocaust restitution. In March 2008, a Belgian government commission found that Holocaust survivors, victims' families, and the general Belgian Jewish community should receive $170 million to compensate for the money and goods they lost during World War II. In 2007, the commission found that the Belgian government had been complicit in Nazi persecution of the Jewish population during the Holocaust, and the country's courts failed to hold Belgian authorities accountable for persecuting and deporting Jews after WWII.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on July 22, 2009 (boomark / email).