A report on Jewish assets restored in Germany with the aid of the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization was presented here today by Dr. Benjamin Ferencz, JRSO director general, at a meeting of the national executive committee of the American Jewish Congress. Summarizing the work of the JRSO since its organization in 1948 by 12 major Jewish organizations, Dr. Ferencz pointed out that:
1. Assets valued at over $190,480,000 have been restored to about 50,000 persecutees; and another $16, 214,600 was retrieved by JRSO as heirless and unclaimed.
2. Jews who had been denied their rights to restitution fround themselves reinstated, through action by JRSO, to assets worth $3,452,500. “As a result of JRSO vigilance, thousands of indigent claimants received legal aid helping them recover cash or properties totalling $7,428,700. “
3. JRSO grants of $9,047,800 to the Jewish Agency bought prefabricated houses to shelter homeless refugees and aided Israel’s reconstruction. A total of $4,285,800 given to the Joint Distribution Committee provided funds for relief work in Germany and for the purchase of essential medical equipment.
“After five years, ” Dr. Ferencz declared, “the restitution program in the U.S. Zone of Germany borders on completion. The JRSO served as a bulwark against the almost constant attempts to undermine the restitution objectives, but the laurels go to the U. S. Government which enacted the law, and to the Jewish organizations which joined in insisting upon its fulfillment. It is a tragic commentary, ” he added, “that the individual Germans concerned failed to grasp the moral urgency of voluntarily reinstating the dispossessed.”
Dr. Gerhart Riegner, director of the World Jewish Congress office in Geneva, reported at the meeting that during the past four years the World Jewish Congress, as a UN accredited non-governmental organization, submitted on behalf of its affiliated communities and organizations in 62 countries some 46 written and 36 oral statements on matters concerning their civil, religious and other human rights before the various organs of the United Nations.
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