JURIST - Paper Chase: Belgium government, banks to pay $170M to Holocaust survivors

[JURIST] A Belgian government commission on restitution for Holocaust victims issued its final report [PDF text, in French] Tuesday, finding that Holocaust survivors, victims' families and the general Jewish community should receive $170 million to compensate for the money and goods they lost during World War II. The Belgian government and Belgian banks Tuesday agreed to pay the figure; $54 million will go to individual claimants and the remainder will go to the Jewish community in trust. BBC News has more. AP has additional coverage.

The Belgian government created the Jewish Community Indemnification Commission [official website; overview of findings, in French] by decree in May 2003 to establish "the facts and possible responsibilities of the Belgian authorities in the persecution and the deportation of the Jews in Belgium during the Second World War." Last year, the commission found that the Belgian government had been complicit [JURIST report] in Nazi persecution of the Jewish population during the Holocaust and the country's courts failed to hold Belgian authorities accountable for persecuting and deporting Jews after World War II.

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