Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Property in
This article is adapted from a presentation at the IAJGS conference in Los Angeles, July 2010—Ed.

From the start of the 20th century—and especially during the 1920s and 30s—American and European Jews, many of whom later became victims of the Holocaust, invested money in Palestine to support Zionism, to protect their capital, and to have assets waiting if they succeeded in immigrating. Today, millions of dollars worth of bank deposits, real estate, and stocks remain unclaimed by heirs unaware of their existence. In 2006, the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, enacted the Assets of Holocaust Victims Law,¹ a law directing its government to actively seek heirs to these assets and establishing a statutory company to administer the procedure.² Genealogical research plays a central role in the claims process, and genealogical expertise is admissible in court. Names of asset owners may be found at www.hashava.org.il/assetList.

Background

Before the Holocaust, Jews invested in Palestine, either by purchasing land or by investing in banks in Palestine. A common investment was to purchase shares of JCT. The Jewish Colonial Trust (JCT), founded by Theodor Herzl in 1899 to provide an economic infrastructure for the Zionist movement, was the parent company of the Anglo Palestine Bank, which in turn was the predecessor of Bank Leumi Le Israel Ltd. Early in the 20th century, the company issued approximately 250,000 shares at a par value of one (British) pound sterling. In 1955 and in 1980, the bank executed reductions in its shareholders’ equity. The primary asset of JCT is five percent of the shares of the Bank Leumi Le Israel Ltd. More than two-thirds of the stockholders (68 percent) came from countries later occupied by the Nazis, but this group, poorer than the rest, owned only 47 percent of the total equity.

In February 2000, the Israeli Knesset established the Knesset Committee of Inquiry on the Location and Restitution of Assets held in Israel of Victims of the Holocaust. In its final report, given in December 2004, the committee noted that:

Since the beginning of the 20th century, and especially during the period of the British Mandate, financial deposits were made in banks in Palestine by Jews, who later became victims of the Holocaust. The reasons for the deposits in the banks in Palestine were of a Zionist nature, getting capital out of Europe, and ensuring the ability to migrate to Palestine by means of capitalist certificates.³

In the early 1940s, these deposits constituted between 30 to 50 percent of the bank’s capital. In accordance with a decree issued by the British Custodian of Enemy Property upon the outbreak of World War II, the banks handed over most of the deposits that were defined in the decree as “enemy assets” to the British Custodian, and upon the establishment of the State of Israel, he handed them over to the Administrator-General of the Government of Israel who serves as the Israeli Custodian of Enemy Property.⁴

The committee also noted that:⁵

Even after World War II, funds and accounts belonging to Holocaust victims or their heirs remained in the banks….          The deposits were handed over to the State not at their real value at the time of the handing over. Deposits that were returned to their owners in accordance with the law, whether by the State or by the banks, were not returned at their full real value….

After the foundation of the State, the banks did not act vigorously to return the funds to their owners, and even when Holocaust survivors, and/or heirs of the victims approached them, the banks did not act with determination to locate the accounts….

Holocaust survivors, or heirs of the victims, who turned to the banks to receive money and received a positive response, received their money at an unreal value.

The Committee of Inquiry further determined that the funds needed to be reappraised and established two methods for doing this. According to the Committee’s calculations, the liability of the State on the basis of the minimum method of reappraisal amounts to NIS 101,203,229 (the equivalent of US$23 million in December 2004) and the liability of the banks to NIS 37,251,735 (the equivalent of US$8.6 million in December 2004).

An outgrowth of the Committee of Inquiry, the primary objectives of this law are to identify assets in Israel that belonged to Holocaust victims, locate their heirs, and return the assets to holders of rights who have not been located. In conjunction with the law, the Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets Ltd., was created to administer this law for 15 years. At the end of that time, any remaining unclaimed assets will be transferred to the Adminstrator General for another five years. After that time, any remaining assets will be transferred to bodies that “act for purposes of aid and commemoration” chosen by the court. The law mandates that all assets of Holocaust victims be transferred to the company together with the documents and accounts in possession of the Administrator General that relate to the assets, and with all other information in his possession that is likely to help in locating heirs or other holders of rights to the asset. Assets that were not held by Holocaust victims, but merely are unclaimed, will be handled by the Administrator General and not by the Company.

“Assets of a Holocaust victim” are defined as an asset for which one of the following holds true:

The asset is in Israel and the last known holder of rights to it is a person who was last known to be in an area, which on September 1, 1939, belonged to one of the states specified in Schedule One, and it is not known whether the said holder of the rights remained alive after December 31, 1945, or it is known that he died during the period between September 1, 1939, and December 31, 1945, in an aforesaid area.⁶

Nature of the Assets

Under the new law, the company seized 500 parcels of land, 49 apartments, 147,997 JCT stocks, NIS 871,000 from Bank Hapoalim, NIS 1,272,000 NIS from Bank Discount, NIS 20,000,000 NIS from Bank Leumi and NIS 250 million from various governmental bodies, worth approximately US$68 million.

Tracing Heirs and Holders of Rights to Assets and
Restitution to the Heirs

The law mandates that the company should “actively act to gather information related to the assets of Holocaust victims, as well as other information likely to help in the tracing of heirs and other holders of rights to the said assets.” In addition, the law gives the company the power to “demand information.”

The company is obliged to publish the list of assets of Holocaust victims and the last known place of residence or stay of the Holocaust victim on September 1, 1939, on the company’s Internet site and among central Jewish organizations around the world, and they shall be on display at the company’s offices at 18 HaSivim Street, Petah Tikva, for inspection by the public. As of July 4, 2010, 60,510 assets were listed on the Hashava site. The site can be searched online:

• By first name in Hebrew or in Latin letters
• By surname in Hebrew or in Latin letters
• By country
• By town
• By property type: money, land or JCT stocks
• By the date that such asset was published by the Company

How to Apply for Restitution of an Asset

The Law requires that an application be submitted,⁷ with the following particulars:

• Specification of the right to the asset (e.g., “The asset belonged to my grandfather who perished in the Holocaust.”)
• Justification of from what that right derives
• The particulars known to the applicant about the asset and the Holocaust victim
• Support with an affidavit that attests to all the facts stated in the application

See Online Application Form on the next page.

Reaching a Decision

In order to consider an application and reach a decision, the company may exempt an applicant from presenting an inheritance order or probate, in accordance with rules that the Minister of Justice will prescribe. The company may, if it deems it proper to do so, make the presentation of a declaration of death a condition for making a decision about rights to an asset. Applicants have the right to appeal a decision. The company may exempt the applicant from issuing an inheritance order in cases where assets are less than 50,000 NIS (about US$13,000), and those cases in which the applicant provided full details about the “composition of the family.” This rule has been expanded to cases where the total value of the assets is not more than 100,000 NIS, but each heir gets less than 50,000 NIS share.

How Genealogy Can Help

For two reasons, the Israeli Inheritance law and the Israeli land registration method, genealogy is an important tool in Israeli restitution cases.

The Legal System. Although Israel enacted a modern Inheritance law in 1965, the modern law does not apply to people who died before its enactment (October 11, 1965). Holocaust victims probate cases, therefore, are ruled by the old Inheritance Ordinance; the Ordinance was enacted on March 8, 1923, during the British mandate over Palestine. The origin of the ordinance was Ottoman and the British adapted it soon after they received the Mandate.

The application of the ordinance to Holocaust victims, however, is problematic because the Ordinance states that it covers only cases of Palestinians (i.e.: people who hold Palestinian [pre-state] citizenship) and “non-foreigners,” that is people residing in Palestine who do not hold foreign citizenship. It does not apply to people who lived under Nazi occupation and did not hold Palestinian citizenship.

In addition, the ordinance applied the Law of the Domicile (i.e., the law applicable where the person’s regular residence is). Therefore, in a case where a Holocaust victim had an asset in Israel, the ordinance rules that the Israeli probate court will apply the law that prevailed at the victims’ residence at the time of the death. That would have led to a ridiculous and unjust result. In most, if not all, countries under Nazi occupation, Jews were deprived of their legal rights and stripped of their assets. Therefore, if the court applied the law that prevailed at the place of domicile of the Holocaust victim, it would have to rule that the victim is not the owner of the property.

In order to claim property, a relative must describe the composition of the family. Israeli Inheritance law (both the old ordinance and the new law of 1965) apply the “Parentèle Method” according to which, if the heir is a child or a spouse, then no other relatives are eligible. If no children and no spouse exist, the eligible heirs are siblings of the victim or their descendants. Here, the claimant to the property needs to show who all the siblings are (and in case any of them died before the victim’s death, who their children were). If no siblings or descendants exist, then the eligible heirs are the four grandparents, and if they are not alive, all their descendants are heirs.⁸ If this is the case, the claimant needs to show the exact composition of the family going back to the grandparents of the victim and determine who were the siblings of the parents of the owner of the property (on both sides of the family).

The following chart demonstrates the possible eligible heirs:

Parentèle Chart

The next stage after compiling the tree is to determine the fate of each of the eligible heirs. As genealogists know, in many cases, reliable evidence about the fate of a Holocaust victim is hard to find. One, therefore, needs to demonstrate diligence in trying to locate all of the heirs.⁹

It is clear that the genealogist is the best qualified professional to render such facts in cases where the relatives are unable to provide these facts. Relatives cannot provide the facts, because they do not know all the branches of the family, because they can not prove what happened to the other relatives, or simply because they cannot locate them.

Israeli Land Registration Method. Another aspect that needs attention is the Israel land registration method. Until the 1960s, the owners of land and buildings in Palestine and later, in Israel, were registered by name only. No passport number or other identification number was recorded. Although land registry offices hold documents that were submitted at the time of purchase, these documents generally do not shed light on the identity of the owners. Most purchases that were done by non-residents of Israel were made by powers of attorney (meaning that the purchaser was not present when the purchase was done, but appointed a proxy who signed for him instead). Some were signed overseas.

Because the registry of real estate records only a name, it is difficult to determine the original owner. For example, if someone claims that certain property was bought by his grandmother, Yente Cohen, and registered in her name, the claimant will need to prove that the Yente Cohen registered as the owner of the land is the same Yente Cohen who resided in New York in 1928. This may be done in a variety of ways:

• Find correspondence about the purchase
• Demonstrate that neighboring lands were bought by other relatives
• Show that the address on the power of attorney (if there is one) was your grandmother’s home address, and so on.

In such cases, a genealogist is the qualified person to execute such research and has the tools to find (or provide) the means to identify the original owner. In these matters, Israeli courts regard genealogists entitled to give testimony in court as expert witnesses.

Summary

Unknown to most, unclaimed assets in Israel today, worth millions of dollars, are waiting to be claimed by the heirs of the original owners, most of whom died in the Holocaust. In many cases, genealogical research will be necessary to establish rightful heirs; the Israeli courts recognize genealogical expertise and allow such testimony as that of an expert witness. The website, www.hashava.org. il/assetList, includes all known unclaimed assets (although more may actually exist). Current Israeli law mandates that the government make vigorous efforts to locate heirs until 2027, at which time all assets still unclaimed will be donated to charitable causes.

Notes

1. Full English version of the Law may be found at http://tinyurl.com/38bdyoz.
2. 2. A statutory company is one established according to a specific law, generally to support a specific cause. See supra footnote #1.
3. 3. In order to obtain an entry visa (certificate) for Palestine, an applicant needed someone in Palestine with enough financial assets to support the applicant. Many applicants solved this problem by sending the needed sum to a person who, in turn, would show that he/she had enough funds to support the person applying for a visa.
4. 4. The Administrator General is a high-ranking official with many responsibilities in the Ministry of Justice. Among other responsibilities he is “the sole body authorized by the Government of Israel, to represent the State of Israel in all transactions where any property is bestowed on the State of Israel by way of a gift, bequest, trust, or in any other manner.”
5. 5. The final report of the committee may be found at http://www.knesset.gov.il/committees/eng/docs/shoa_finalreport_eng.doc.
6. 6. Schedule One is a list of countries in which, if the owner had lived there, he/she likely was a Holocaust victim. These are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Tunisia, USSR, and (former) Yugoslavia.
7. 7. Claimants must actively apply and complete the questionnaire provided.
8. More on this issue, see: Prof. Michael Corinaldi, The Law of Succession, Wills, Succession and Probate (The Israel Bar Publishing House – 2008).
9. 9. See Civil Appeal (Israel Supreme Court) 9694/01 The Administrator General V. The Estate Manager of the Late Zeev ben Zvi Bergman, published in Piskei Din Nun-Chet (vol. 2, p. 65). The extent of due diligence will be determined from case to case.

Rony Golan is a professional genealogist based in Israel and a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists. He is a graduate of the Tel Aviv University Law Faculty and a member of the Israel Bar (1986), and serves as an expert witness on genealogy in Israeli courts. An educator and lecturer on genealogy in various forums, Golan is a legal advisor to the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy and Paul Jacobi Center (IIJG) in Jerusalem and has presented at several IAJGS conferences. His genealogy Internet site is www.genealogy.co.il; he has a blog at www.mishpachtoblogia.co.il.