Jewish Community in Germany Signs Agreement on Division of Property

The re-established Kehillah of Fuerth, last holdout among the Jewish communities in Germany, has signed an agreement on the distribution of the property of the pre-Hitler Fuerth community between the new Kehillah on the one hand and, on the other, the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO), which was established by the major Jewish world organizations as custodian of heirless Jewish property in the American zone of Germany.

Under the spiritual leadership of Rav Spiro, formerly of Warsaw, Fuerth is today relatively one of the most vigorous communities in Germany. For its size, it has the best-organized religious life and the largest proportion of children. But of the 275 Jews now living in Fuerth, the large majority are former DP’s. Only about 30 were part of the old Fuerth community, which, 20 years ago, had a membership of some 3,000.

The pre-Hitler community, a wealthy and pious one, was distinguished by many endowments and institutions set up in the course of centuries. A small portion of the assets once owned by these endowments and institutions have survived. How to divide them between the re-established Kehillah, only a handful of whose members were connected with the old community, and the JRSO which utilizes the funds accruing to it for relief and resettlement purposes throughout the world, has been a vexing question for many years.

Now that Fuerth has signed, the JRSO has succeeded in concluding voluntary agreements with all the communities concerned and with the four German states of the U. S. zone. It must still await ratification of the tentative “global settlement” reached some time ago with the West Berlin city government, which is stalling and trying to reduce still further the relatively trifling amount it is willing to pay in exchange for all heirless property claims in Berlin.