Having survived three years in the Teresienstadt concentration camp, Max Hirshfeld returned home to the German town of Bielefeld. In 1950, Hirschfeld initiated a search for the property of his brother Hermann, murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. He knew his brother had deposited substantial assets with three friends in Britain, and it took him two years to compile the list.
- A gold pocket watch inscribed with 60th birthday greetings;
- A gold chain for the watch.
- Twenty gold Reichsmark coins.
- The sum of 517 pounds sterling.
- The sum of 1,595 Dutch guilder.
- The sum of US $1,000,
- The sum of 1,250 Swiss francs.
- A suit of clothes packed into a suitcase.
- A pair of cufflinks.
- A pair of suit buttons.
- 25 sundry coins.
- 2,800 Reichsmark in notes.
Max Hirschfeld’s problem was that these assets had been seized at the beginning of the war by the Custodian of Enemy Property at Britain’s Board of Trade, which, under a British law enacted in 1939, took possession of the British-held property of all German and Italian subjects. Later, the Custodian’s powers were extended also to the assets of citizens of occupied countries. Hirschfeld, therefore, had to apply to the Custodian for his brother’s property.
His application was rejected. Firstly, said the British officials, you are not the only heir, there is also a sister-in-law, Margaret Hirschfeld Graf. Secondly, we have found none of the property in question, except for the watch, which will be restored to you ex gratia. Thirdly, the application relates to enemy property, and we are therefore not prepared to return anything to you other than the watch. After three years of correspondence, the only reply vouchsafed, in August 1953, by G.H. Perel of the Custodian‘s Office, was just one reason for not restoring the property, namely that it was enemy property. The fact that its owner had been a Jew murdered by the Nazis, hardly made any difference.
Years of bureaucratic hassles
What became of Hirschfeld’s property? It seems likely that, in August 1957, it was transferred to the "Nazi Victims Welfare Fund", which received Stg 250,000 (3.25 million pounds sterling in real values), out of German assets not restored to their owners. Over the next two years, the fund bestowed all the money upon dozens of, mainly Jewish, organisations and 34 survivors, most of whom were also Jewish. The fund, however, dealt with German property only. The British found a very different use for the property of other "enemy aliens"; they took it for themselves.
Britain, it transpires, deliberately instituted an intransigent policy toward Holocaust survivors and the heirs of the victims, forcing them to keep up the fight for years on end until finally, sometimes, getting their property back. The property was restored at nominal value, one half its worth when seized by the Custodian, or even less. This policy is still in effect.
Moshe Levinson of Tel-Aviv encountered this policy less than ten years ago, when, after battling the bureaucrats since the fifties, he managed to get Stg 908 taken from his brother, Avraham Levinson. Reuven Tal and Yohanan Leopold of Haifa have been fruitlessly trying, for some years, to bring to a successful conclusion an initiative they mounted in the sixties, to obtain from the Custodian the balance of their Romanian and Hungarian family property.
Heavy offensive to be mounted against our assets
Britain's motive for this policy is expressly spelled out in two of the hundreds of documents on which this study is based. In April 1949, members of the Jewish Congress met in London with representatives of the Custodian's Office, requesting that the Custodian facilitate the release of Holocaust victims’ assets. The application focused mainly on its request to redefine the term "deprivation of liberty" which, as we will show, was a precondition for the release of the assets. Which is to say, only a person deprived of his liberty by the Germans was considered a victim, entitled to have his property restored.
Reposing in the State Archives in London, are the records kept by Sir Henry Gregory, a senior official at the Custodian's Office, in which he comments on various applications by Jewish representatives. Concerning a more inclusive definition of the term "deprivation of liberty", Gregory writes: "My feeling is that the moment we agree to a broader interpretation base [of the term, I.L.] in this context, we will have no clear demarcation lines, and there will be so many instances in which we will be unable to refuse, that the present exceptional cases of release of property will be the norm, and a heavy offensive will be mounted against our assets. It will, moreover, be impossible to refuse a demand to re-examine the many applications we have already turned down".
Beyond the fact he refers to the property of Holocaust victims as "our assets", Gregory obviously has grave misgivings about the likelihood that Britain may be forced to restore them.
Worth Britain's while to hang on to property
The British Exchequer found it well worth its while to retain Holocaust victims’ property. A paper dated August 1952 sums up the amount of property which originally belonged to citizens of the three most problematic states, namely Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. These three were Nazi satellites, which, after the war, fell under communist rule, thus providing the British with what they deemed two sufficient pretexts for continuing to retain their citizens’ property. In real values, the Custodian had Stg 10.2 million in Hungarian assets, as against British claims of Stg 221 million. Bulgarian assets amounted to Stg 2.3 million, while claims against Bulgaria totalled Stg 34 million. The property of Romanian citizens amounted to Stg 137 million, while British citizens had claims amounting to Stg 204 million against Romania.
How much money did the Custodian release? This is fully documented. Part of a document dated 1958 indicates that by that time, the Custodian had released Hungarian property in a real value of Stg 9 million, which is to say, about 90% of the property it had held. Assets released to the citizens of Romania had a similar real value, representing just 6% of the total assets held by the Custodian. In the case of Bulgaria, the assets released amounted to Stg 60,000, a mere 2% of total assets. The document also indicates that the amount released represented 83% of the monetary value of all applications.
This shows that, at least where Bulgaria and Romania were concerned, no heirs remained to claim most of the assets. It is important to point out, once more, that the Custodian paid back in nominal values, decades after the money was deposited in Britain. The law did in fact provide for a token interest rate of 0.75% per annum, but only those claiming this interest were to receive it, and nobody, evidently, did.
Bureaucratic chill
Another question is, how much of the property held by the Custodian belonged to Jewish Holocaust victims and/or survivors. The British officials handling the matter were themselves unable to answer this question. An internal memorandum, dated August 1952, determines that while it was impossible to quantify the Jewish property, "it is customarily assumed that it accounted for a substantial proportion of the assets being held [by the Custodian, I.L.] and belonging to individuals and partnerships". An authoritative answer to this question will be able to be given only after an exhaustive examination of 6,0000 instances documented in the Custodian’s files.
The moral aspect of the problem troubled the British officials not at all. This clearly emerges from the almost impossible rules set for the release of money, from the coldly bureaucratic manner in which the officials dealt with questions of what constituted a ghetto and what a labour camp, and from the unbending manner in which they dealt with applicants. But, most of all, it is expressly spelled out in various almost unnoticed paperwork entries. Thus, for example, one document is headed "Victims", in inverted commas, while in another document, the word "ghetto" was put in quote marks.
More clearly indicative of this approach than all else, is one word pencilled by an official at the Custodian’s Office, in the margins of a letter he received from the Jewish Congress in August 1949. The writer, P.R. Binenfeld, was trying to establish a moral principle: "No government and no country may profit from crimes committed by the Nazi governments, or by the fascists, against persecuted citizens, and especially against the Jews". That same official expressed his peculiar moral outlook by inserting one single word, "transgressor". Further to this correction, the sentence reads as follows: "No transgressor government and no transgressor country may profit…" etc. This official, quite possibly Gregory himself, took the view that Britain, since she did not transgress against them, was entitled to benefit from the property of the victims.
Five obligatory conditions
This cynical policy found practical expression in the rules set by the British government, immediately after the war, for the release of the property of those designated "technical enemies", which is to say: citizens of states occupied by Germany. There were five conditions, all of which must be met:
- The property owner had been deprived of his freedom by law or regulation, constituting discrimination against religious, racial or other groups;
- At any time between the outbreak of the war and the enactment of the discriminatory legislation, the property owner did not enjoy full civil rights in the enemy country.
- The property owner had left the enemy country, or intended to do so within a reasonable space of time, in order to establish residence outside the enemy country.
- The property owner had loyally adhered to the Allies’ wartime goals.
- His case warranted consideration.
The two principal requirements, that made it very difficult for Holocaust survivors to obtain their money, were those of "deprivation of liberty" and the requirement of presently residing outside the former enemy country. As early as October 1949, MP John Foster pointed out these problems, in a clear, detailed manner. Foster’s memorandum states that the British definition of "deprivation of liberty" results in a situation in which whoever contrived to go into hiding and be saved from the concentration camps, was not entitled to restitution of property, since had had not been formally deprived of his freedom. Moreover, even a person arrested for a short period and released, or one who was incarcerated in a labour camp, would forfeit his property under the British definitions. As regards the requirement of residence outside the enemy country, this was impossible for Jews who, after the war, found themselves behind the Iron Curtain.
We are not, after all, a bank
Efforts made, over the years, to modify the British approach, have proved unsuccessful. Britain Jewish Board of Guardians, tried, as did the World Jewish Congress and even the Israeli Embassy in London. The Jewish organisations mostly advanced businesslike arguments, comparing the unbending British policy with the more flexible approach of the United States. They steered clear of moral arguments, perhaps because they correctly gauged that these would cut no ice. But nothing helped. At most, they managed to secure a few specific concessions, such as the postponement of the final date for filing claims for the restitution of property, or recognition of Hungarian labour camp inmates as being eligible for the restitution of property.
Henry Nathan Shapiro spent five years corresponding and arguing with British officials, until, in 1956, he got his money, a sum of Stg 2,120, that had been on deposit with Lloyds Bank, and was by then reduced to a mere half of its value as seized property. Along the way, Shapiro was required to adduce piles of evidence and affidavits. At a certain point, he became desperate enough to apply directly to the then Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. Shapiro wrote him a letter describing what had befallen him in Bulgaria, whence he fled in November, 1950, at which time a 36 kg. suitcase represented his entire property. Obviously, he was in vital need of the money in Britain.
Henryk Silberman was also in desperate need of his money. He was over 60 years old, when he immigrated to Israel and started to fight for the restitution of his property. His letters expressly beseech the British for a little flexibility. In November 1961, for example, Silberman wrote: "This sum of money constitutes, for me, at this critical time, my only hope and the sole basis for the start of a new life at our advanced age". After close on three years, Silberman received the Stg 960 he had deposited with the Erlanger investment company, less a 2% commission collected by the Custodian. In contemporary values, this represented just one third of Silberman’s money. In real values, he should have received Stg 9,000.
Dan I., a Zionist leader in Romania, was arrested in 1950 for Zionist activity, released in July 1955, and fled to Vienna in August 1957. Three days after reaching Austria, Dan I. applied to District Bank in London, referred to previous applications by his wife, and asked to be given his property: Stg 380 (in real terms - Stg 5,000) and British government war bonds in a value of Stg 500 (in real terms - Stg 6,580), at an interest rate of 3.5% per annum.
Dan I.’s application was rejected in October. The explanation he got was that use had already been made of the money under the terms of the peace accord between Britain and Romania (meaning, the money had been used to compensate British citizens). Dan I., who had meanwhile settled in Tel-Aviv, commented wrathfully: "It is most regrettable that I, as a Jew who deposited his savings in British hands, to secure them against persecution measures by the Nazi and Communist regimes, must suffer today… after everything I suffered in the Nazi concentration camps and Communist jails, I think it is right and proper not to treat my property as "enemy property", but to transfer it to my possession".
After more than five years, Britain released half the property, on the grounds that it was registered jointly also in the name of his wife, Clara I. Finally, in May 1963, after six years of struggle, the couple got back most of their money, a sum of Stg 960, already eroded down to a mere Stg 400 (which in real terms would have been Stg 10,000). They were not awarded any interest on the bonds.
Britain persists in this same policy to this very day. Holocaust victims’ heirs must fight for years before getting, at best, an "ex gratia payment" in nominal values, meaning a negligible amount. The evidence put forward here attests to the need to re-examine thousand of cases handled by the Custodian in the fifties and sixties. There are grounds for demanding that survivors and heirs at least be paid the 0.75% per annum interest provided by law and withheld from them, if not the full linkage differences on their money. Property for which there are no surviving heirs should be restored to the Jewish people.