No action will be taken by the Greek Government to change the status of OPAIE, the Jewish heirless property successor organization, without prior consultation with the Greek Jewish community, Zachariah Shuster, European Director for the American Jewish Committee, reported today.
Mr. Shuster, who has just returned from Athens, said he had been given that assurance by Panayopolis Kanellopoulos, Greek Deputy Premier. Mr. Shuster met with Greek officials to check a report that the Greek Government planned to make substantial changes in the structure and functions of OPAIE. Income of the OPAIE now goes for relief and rehabilitation programs of the 60,000-member Greek Jewish community.
A. Averoff, the Greek Foreign Minister, and the Deputy Premier told Mr. Shuster that the attitude of the Greek Government to ward its Jewish citizens was a friendly and sympathetic one. The Deputy Premier, who was writer and author of the 1946 law providing that Jewish heirless assets should be used for Jewish victims of Nazism, said nothing would be done by Greece contrary to the spirit of the 1946 law, Mr. Shuster said.
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