BRUSSELS (AFP-EJP)—The Belgian government, banks and insurance companies have agreed to pay 35.2 million euros (54 million dollars) to families of Jews for their material losses during the Holocaust, an official commission announced on Tuesday.
But authorities have been unable to trace most of the Jewish Holocaust victims, entitled to payments from a 110 million euros (169 million dollar) fund, according to an official report released Tuesday.
The authorities have so far tracked down just over 20 percent of the 24,000 Nazi Holocaust victims or their descendants.
The commission, set up in 2001 to compensate Jewish victims of the Nazis, “only treated 5,210 files which is 21,7 percent of the expected figure,” the report said.
The balance of 75 million euros will be handed over to a special Foundation that will help keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and will help finance religious, cultural and social projects in the Jewish community of Belgium.
Campaigners welcomed the decision to compensate those whose property and goods in Belgium had been looted by Nazi occupiers.
"In a certain way, justice has been done. Unfortunately there are people who never came back" from the Nazi death camps, Eli Ringer, co-chairman of the committee on the restitution of Jewish assets, was quoted as saying.
A total of 30,291 Jewish residents were deported to death camps during WWII, including over 5,000 children under 15, according to the committee's final report.
Of that figure only 1,455 adults survived.
The relatively low figure of 5,210 compensation pay-outs "illustrates the tough truth; the absence of any survivor to receive the compensation," the report said.
The compensation fund included money from Belgian insurers and other financial institutions.
While the individual compensation payments varied, 80 percent were under 10,000 euros, said the committee which admitted that the payments were "frequently met with disappointment".
The committee was set up by the government in 2001 when Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt publicly acknowledged that Belgian collaboration, including within the wartime administration, helped the Nazis to carry out the Jewish deportations in 1942.
Last year, Verhofstadt apologized for the Belgian authorities' role in the deportation of Jews to Nazi extermination camps.
Around 40,000 Jews live today in the country.
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