East German Government Abolishes All Restitution Legislation

The East German Government recently abolished all restitution legislation still in force in the Communist zones of Germany and in East Berlin, the European office of the American Jewish Committee declared today.

The Committee added that this action “wipes cut all hope” that former Jewish residents of East Germany who now reside abroad could recover assets or property stolen from them by the Nazis. It also eliminates the possibility of some 4,000 Jews still living in East Berlin and elsewhere in Communist Germany recovering title to their property.

In the past, property confiscated by the Nazis was placed under a government custodian who, however, refused to pay any indemnification or compensation to the former owners. In some cases, the A.J.C. reported, Jewish survivors have been given the use of homes or real estate taken from them by the Nazis, but “only in the rarest of cases” was title to the property returned to them.

The American Jewish Committee stated that restitution legislation in East Germany had always been “rudimentary” and that a serious effort to carry out restitution had been made only for a short while in the states of Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia during 1947. The recent East German action rescinded this state legislation as well as two Soviet military orders of Oct., 1945, and April, 1948, dealing with the sequestration of Nazi property and the return of organizational and community property to groups which originally owned them.

The A.J.C. contrasted the East German record on restitution with the programs in all three zones of West Germany “thanks to which tens of thousands of Jewish individuals had managed to recover property stolen from them by the Nazis.”