Two rulings issued yesterday by the Surrogates Court here would seem to clear the way for heirs of persons who were seized by the Nazis and subsequently never heard from to obtain possession of property in this city belonging to the victims.
The court ruled in the cases of a French Jewish woman and a Rumanian Jewish man, both of whom were sent to death camps by the Nazis and are presumed to have perished, that “a certificate of presumptive death from a foreign state of domicile will be accepted as proof of death. If the ruling serves as a precedent for other sections of the country, many hundreds of refugees who have been barred from estates bequeathed to them because they could not produce proof of the death of the testator will be benefitted.
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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.
