The B’nai B’rith has concluded a lump sum agreement with West Germany to receive $2,400,000 as restitution for properties confiscated by the Nazis in 1937, Philip M. Klutznick, president, announced here last night.
About half of this sum would be payable immediately. The other half is due in March 1962. The agreement covers only movable properties, including paintings, furnishings, libraries, cash deposits and securities. Fixed properties were returned to B’nai B’rith some years ago, most of them badly wrecked by bombings. The B’nai B’rith Board of Governors endorsed the settlement.
Klutznick also announced that the former B’nai B’rith headquarters building in Berlin had been sold to the city of West Berlin for $280, 000. He said funds received from West Germany, under the new agreement, would probably be used to help re-establish the shattered communal lives of former German B’nai B’rith members now living in Israel, South America and Europe.
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