Israel envoys to Washington, London and Paris today delivered identical notes to the American, British and French Government outlining the Jewish people’s claims on Germany for the murder and spoilation of six million Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe. A similar note was handed to the Soviet charge d’affaires here. The communication made the following five points:
1. Six years after the surrender of Germany Allied decrees are largely unfulfilled requests. The powers of the Allies under the occupation statutes should be retained by the four powers.
2. Israel, which has accepted the largest number of Jewish immigrants, is especially interested in the satisfaction of their claims, and supports their claims for compensation for physical injury sustained in Germany prior to and during the war.
3. The Israel Government requests that the occupying powers utilize legal machinery to ensure speedy and effective settlement of these claims. It suggests that a special law be enacted to cover all the German states where claims cannot presently be processed because of arbitrary restrictions concerning dates and residence requirements. The general law should prevent a victim’s claim being invalidated because the claimant left the place of the crime after a certain date and now resides outside Germany.
4. These claims are forwarded not only in the name of Israel, but for the Jewish people as a whole. The handling of claims against Germany is rendered illusory because of lack of currency transfer facilities. It is immoral to apply currency transfer restrictions to the claims of persecutees, permitting Germany to benefit from the mass murder and rapine wrought by the Nazis.
5. Apart from the satisfaction of individual claims, Israel reserves the right to forward general claims for the wholesale destruction of European Jewry.
No official estimate has been released of the total of the individual claims for compensation. Informed sources here believe that it exceeds 100,000,000 pounds ($280,000,000).
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
