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A synagogue in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. Before WWII, Vilnius was a cultural hub known as the "Jerusalem of the North".
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VILNIUS (EJP)---“I regret to say that this restitution package is wholly inadequate and unacceptable”, said Ronald Lauder and Simon Alperovitch, head of the Jewish community in Lithuania after the Lithuanian government submitted to parliament a compensation plan for Jewish communal property seized during World War II.
“The proposed legislation is lacking in several critical respects, including the terms and the amount of compensation offered, and the speed at which payments will be made. It also does not clarify how monetary restitution will be distributed, and how returned properties will be managed. These issues need to be clarified before parliament considers the legislation this fall,” a joint statement said.
Ninety-five percent of Lithuania’s 160,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their local collaborators during World War II. Their properties were seized and never returned.
Negotiations with the Lithuanian Government on restitution began in 2002 and after long delays.
The local Jewish Community and the WJRO researched archives and identified at least 438 former Jewish communal properties that should be returned.
Six years later, the Government has now arbitrarily selected 110 of these properties, made a unilateral evaluation of their total worth, and decided to pay a mere fraction of the estimated amount. No payments are to be made before 2012.
A better plan was negotiated between the former Lithuanian government and the Jewish Community. It would have led to the return of previously Jewish communal properties.
The local Jewish community and the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) urged the present government to adopt this agreed legislation, but it decided to break off negotiations and to introduce the present unilateral and arbitrary proposal.
In most other countries where property agreements were reached, the actual properties are returned or full-value compensation is paid. “Lithuania, however, only proposes to pay a fraction of a fraction”, the organization regretted.
The Foundation for Lithuanian Jewish Heritage was established by the WJRO, the local Jewish Community and the Lithuanian Jewish Religious Council to serve as the recipient of restituted property, to assist needy Holocaust survivors, and to ensure that it would be used to properly rebuild Jewish life in Lithuania.
The proposed legislation now reserves to the Lithuanian Government the right to determine who will receive the compensation funds and how the funds will be used.