During World War II, the British government seized the property of Jews from occupied Europe, and after the war, refused to return the property to Holocaust survivors and their heirs. London’s Holocaust Educational Trust, headed by Lord Janner, today published the results of extensive research which reached this conclusion. The trust’s findings are essentially identical to findings published two months ago by "Globes".
The research deals with assets frozen by the Custodian of Enemy Property under the 1939 Trading with the Enemy Act. In 1939 values, £400 million was frozen, and the British government estimated that a large portion of it belonged to Jews. The research notes that Britain, together with America and Switzerland, was the main destination for so-called "flight capital".
Archives in the Public Record Office in London show that Britain refused to repay a significant portion of wartime assets seized from thousands who were killed by the Nazis. The research estimates the assets’ worth at £60-600 million at current prices, as the assets were valued at £3.5-35 million in 1945. The frozen assets were used to repay local individuals and companies who suffered pre-war debts from enemy countries in Eastern Europe primarily Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.
The research also states that British bureaucrats demanded that the heirs of Holocaust victims provide "sufficient proof" of the death of the property owners in the Holocaust. Assets that had not been claimed, were returned to British banks once they were unfrozen in the 1950s, under the assumption that the property owners were no longer living.
Janner called on the British government and the banks yesterday to publish lists of all victims' accounts and to repay the money with interest to their heirs. Janner, vice president of the Wolrd Jewish Congress and former Labour MP, called on Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to act soon to solve the problem. He also announced he will raise the matter for discussion at the New York meeting of the World Jewish Restitution Organization on Tuesday.