The World Federation of Jews of Hungarian Descent, representing about 300,000 Jewish victims of nazism, cabled an appeal tonight to Dr. Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of West Germany, requesting that West German restitution laws be applied to Jews now denied such compensation because they had still been in Communist countries behind the Iron Curtain when the German law went into effect.
According to Dr. Frederic Gorog, president of the Federation of ex-Hungarian Jews, many Jewish victims of nazism are being denied German compensation because, through no fault of their own, they could not file restitution applications. The German law provides that compensation be paid only to Nazi victims who were refugees of stateless as of October 1, 1953.
“A sizable group of these forgotten victims,” said Dr. Gorog, “are Jewish refugees from Communism who fled in 1956 and 1957 from Hungary after the Hungarian revolution failed. The great majority is without means and, therefore, should come under the material benefits of the German compensation law, not only for a moral satisfaction but also from a social point of view.”
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.
