The project was shelved, the database disappeared: Where did the Holocaust survivors' property return project go? | Israel today

"The Holocaust is not only the greatest genocide in the world, but also the greatest act of theft in the world," said Bobby Brown, a shadow man who served as a project manager for restoring the lost property of Holocaust victims, and who was former Prime Minister Netanyahu's right-hand man in an interview on Holocaust Remembrance Day. To.

Brown, who worked behind the scenes to restore billions of dollars in the past and currently serves as vice president of Ariel University, also demands answers from the government and asks: "Where has the project to restore the property of hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors gone?"

Brown, 70, one of the founders of the settlement in Gush Etzion, was, among other things, a member of an international committee established in 1993, thanks to which Holocaust survivors received compensation in the amount of more than half a billion dollars.

"In Eastern Europe, people did not have bank accounts but insurance - for weddings, property and life insurance," he explains.

After the war, the vast majority of insurance companies refused to pay the compensation.

"There were companies that claimed they were not paid the premiums, as if a check could be sent from Auschwitz every month," Brown says cynically.

In 2012, it was decided to embark on a property restoration project called "Hart", headed by Brown - the government allocated NIS 25 million for this, and hundreds of thousands of testimonies and documents were collected.

But after about four years the project was shelved and the database disappeared.

Treasury officials, Brown says, "wanted to put the money as a budget item for the survivors, but I wanted justice - for the survivors to get the money directly."

The Foreign Ministry also objected: "They feared a diplomatic mess because I demanded justice from European governments."

Now the Shurat Din organization has decided to embark on a project called "Last Chance" and help the property owners.

Advocate Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, president of the organization, explains that "these are billions that belong to the families of the victims, and the insurance companies have no right to leave them in their pockets."

The Ministry of Social Equality responded: "We will study the letter and treat it in the usual ways."

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