The proposed book offers rich and new multi-disciplinary insights into how the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) tried and mainly failed in its mission to obtain justice for Holocaust survivors who lost property, art, life and property insurance, and family members. It does so from the Israeli point of view and the institutional Jewish point of view, both little dealt with so far. The book describes all the major issues involved in the process of seeking such justice. As both a historical account and a case study for the future, it proposes better global tools for dealing with restitution of property following warfare, now and in the future, and it offers insights for solving current injustices and even preventing them in the future.
My position as Senior Advisor and Senior Director for the Israeli government, my contacts among the Holocaust restitution community, and my dissertation research that undergirds this book have given me unique access to material on Shoah restitution and the WJRO. Thanks to my access to archival materials inaccessible to other researchers, the “inside information” I have through participating in global high-level negotiations on Holocaust restitution, and the direct access I have had to many major players of this process over the past twenty years, the proposed book is a treasure trove of information.
The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the ensuing disintegration of the USSR in the early 1990s resulted in the US becoming the world’s sole super-power. As such, the United States found itself in the unchallengeable position of being able to promote some of its core beliefs—liberty, individual rights, justice and the right to own property—among the Soviet Union’s former client states in Eastern Europe. In the course of the following few years, these nascent democracies turned westward, with an ever-growing number of them joining the European Union and NATO. These political re-alignments and the adoption of new political outlooks were also reflected in the approach of the countries of Eastern Europe to the issues of indemnification and restitution of assets owned by Jews that were seized under Nazi rule. All this triggered a wave of class action
lawsuits in US courts that dealt with broad restitution issues pertaining to Eastern Europe as well as to other parts of the world.
Order this fascinating book now:
Betraying the Trust: Israel, Europe and Restitution after the Holocaust | Brill