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Main U.S. negotiator on the compensation of wartime slave and forced labor victims Stuart Eizenstat (L) chats with the holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel during the opening of the five-day Holocaust Era Assets Conference on June 26, 2009 in Prague. Holocaust survivors, Jewish groups and experts assembled in Prague to assess efforts to return property and possessions stolen by the Nazis to their rightful owners or heirs.
Photo: Michal Cizek in Prague, AFP Copyright 2009
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PRAGUE (AFP)---Nobel laureate and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel on Friday expressed anger at the opening of an international conference in Prague at the failure to ensure restitution of assets seized from Holocaust victims.
"Why did it take so long? ... The easiest response would have been to give back after the war, the buildings, the money, the artworks that were confiscated," he said.
"The fact it was not done is scandalous," he added at the conference held more than ten years after 44 countries pledged in Washington to go ahead with assets restitution.
The principles adopted in Washington about restitution and compensation of Jewish assets seized between 1939 and 1945 are not legally binding and some countries, above all in eastern Europe, have not implemented them.
Stuart Eizenstat, head of the US delegation, said the conference was "one of the last chances" to inject a new sense of urgency to solve the question.
Czech minister for European affairs, Stefan Fule, whose country holds the European Union presidency until the end of June, called on the participants to "send a clear message" at a time when anti-Semitism was on the rise throughout Europe.
Representatives of 49 countries and dozens of organisations were taking part in the five-day conference which will be the last event held under the six-month Czech EU presidency.
It aims include assessing progress made since the Washington conference in 1998.
The conference started shortly after the Lithuanian government announced a plan to put off compensation payouts till 2012 because of the economic crisis.
Lithuania has pledged to pay out 113 million litas (33 million euros, 46 million dollars) -- or around one third of the value of the properties seized -- from a special government fund over the course of a decade.
But the American Jewish Committee said Thursday the compensation proposal
was "far too little and also far too late."