Lithuania Agrees To Pay $47M for Jewish Property

By JTA October 23, 2012

Lithuania’s outgoing chancellor agreed in principle to a lump sum transfer $47 million to the country’s Jewish community as compensation for lost Holocaust-era property.

Chancellor Deividas Matulionis, chief of staff for Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, agreed to the transfer at a meeting last week with Gunther Saathoff, director of the German government’s EVZ Foundation for compensating victims of Nazi Germany, Faina Kukliansky, the vice president of Lithuania’s Jewish community, told JTA.

The lump sum, which is due in 2014, is the lion’s share of money pledged by the government to the Jewish community in compensation talks.

Kukliansky said the government wanted to pay the money yearly in 10 installments, “but the Jewish community wanted to receive it in one lump sum, deposit it and then pay victims of Nazi crimes yearly stipends from the interest. This was the subject of the meeting.”

To date, the Jewish community has received nearly $1.13 million from the government, which will be distributed among Holocaust survivors and victims of Nazi persecution. Though the Lithuanian media mentioned 1,500 to 2,000 recipients, Kukliansky said she did not know how many there were.

“We are working to locate them right now,” she said.

Kukliansky also said she was not sure that agreements reached with the current government would be applied by the administration set to take over following national elections to be held this month.

Earlier this month, Lithuania’s central elections committee said it may probe nationalist politicians in connection with anti-Semitic leaflets that criticized the outgoing government for “wasting money” on Jewish claims.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO