Searching for Justice After the Holocaust: Fulfilling the Terezin Declaration and Immovable Property Restitution

Description

The Nazis and their state-sponsored cohorts stole mercilessly from the Jews of Europe. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, returning survivors had to navigate a frequently unclear path to recover their property from governments and neighbors who had failed to protect them and who often had been complicit in their persecution. While the return of Nazi-looted art has garnered the most media attention, and there have been well-publicized settlements involving stolen Swiss bank deposits and unpaid insurance policies, there is a larger piece of Holocaust injustice that has not been adequately dealt with: stolen land and buildings, much of which today still remain unrestituted. This book is about the less publicized area of post-Holocaust restitution involving immovable (real) property confiscated from European Jews and others during World War II. In 2009, 47 countries convened in Prague to deal with the lingering problem of restitution of pre-war private, communal and heirless property stolen in the Holocaust. The outcome was the issuance by 47 states of the Terezin Declaration on Holocaust Era Assets and Related Issues, which aimed, among other things, to "rectify the consequences" of the wrongful property seizures. This book sets forth the legal history of Holocaust immovable property restitution in each of the Terezin Declaration signatory states. It also analyses how each of the 47 countries has fulfilled the standards of the Guidelines and Best Practices of the Terezin Declaration, issued in 2010 in conjunction with the establishment of the European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI) to monitor compliance. The book is based on the Holocaust (Shoah) Immovable Property Restitution Study commissioned by ESLI, written by the authors and issued in Brussels in 2017 before the European Parliament. Cover Searching for Justice after the Holocaust Copyright Dedication Contents Foreword Acknowledgments Table of Cases Table of Legislation Introduction 1. Albania 2. Argentina 3. Australia 4. Austria 5. Belarus 6. Belgium 7. Bosnia-​Herzegovina 8. Brazil 9. Bulgaria 10. Canada 11. Croatia 12. Cyprus 13. Czech Republic 14. Denmark 15. Estonia 16. Finland 17. France 18. Germany 19. Greece 20. Hungary 21. Ireland 22. Israel 23. Italy 24. Latvia 25. Lithuania 26. Luxembourg 27. Macedonia 28. Malta 29. Moldova 30. Montenegro 31. Netherlands 32. Norway 33. Poland 34. Portugal 35. Romania 36. Russia 37. Serbia 38. Slovakia 39. Slovenia 40. Spain 41. Sweden 42. Switzerland 43. Turkey 44. Ukraine 45. United Kingdom 46. United States 47. Uruguay Conclusion Index