The opening session of the Israeli-German negotiations for reparations payments by West Germany will be held tomorrow in an old castle at Wassenaar, a suburb of The Hague, it was learned here today. The castle will be guarded by a large number of Dutch police and Plainclothesmen to prevent any possible disturbances by elements opposed to the holding of the negotiations.
A spokesman for the delegation of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany today told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the delegation will support Israel’s claims. He outlined the aims of the Conference, which represents 23 major Jewish organizations outside of Israel, as being:
1). To secure for hundreds of thousands of survivors of Nazi persecution the restitution of property wrested from them by the Nazi government;
2). To obtain compensation for those incarcerated in concentration camps and for what they suffered as a result;
3). To guarantee that Jewish assets confiscated during the Nazi regime, for which there are neither heirs nor claimants, not remain with those who participated in or profited from the pillage, but be made available to representative Jewish organizations for the relief, rehabilitation and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of needy survivors of Nazi persecution.
“The magnitude of the problem facing negotiators may be gauged from the fact that under fragmentary legislation already in force, providing compensation for persecutees, individuals residing outside of Germany filed some 125,000 claims in the U.S. Zone alone,” he said. “The U.S. Zone encompasses only four of the eleven states of the West German Federal Republic.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
