Compensation for Jewish community

Aug 19, 2008
In cooperation with BNS

RIGA - Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis has issued a decree ordering the Justice Ministry to set up a new workgroup to consider compensations to Latvia's Jewish community for losses it suffered during the Holocaust, Neatkariga Riga newspaper reports.

The issue of compensations is being raised again after the prime minister received a letter from a global Jewish organization in the spring. The organization's representative Steven Schwager notes in the letter that in 2006 Latvian lawmakers rejected a bill that would have seen 32 million lats (EUR 45.5 mln) paid out to the Jewish community.

The Jewish organization demands that a "workgroup be set up as soon as possible to settle the issue of the unreturned Jewish properties".

After the letter was sent to the Latvian Justice Ministry in May, Justice Minister Gaidis Berzins said it would not be reasonable to form the workgroup as compensations can be claimed under the already existing laws.

The prime minister, however, ordered the ministry to set up a new workgroup and the ministry complied.

The council of Latvia's ruling coalition has not yet discussed the issue of compensations to the Jewish community, while Maris Kucinskis, chairman of the ruling People's Party faction in the parliament, said he had heard nothing about a new workgroup. He did say that most probably the parliament would reject a proposal to pay out such huge compensations.

In 2006, the Latvian parliament rejected the government's bill on support to Latvia's Jewish community, to pay almost 32 million lats to Jewish organizations in ten years to compensate for the "unjust historical consequences the Jewish community has suffered due to the Holocaust committed by the Nazi Germany and the Soviet occupation regime" in Latvia's territory.

The government planned to gradually pay the allocated money from 2007 till 2016.

The Jewish community would be able to use the allocated funds for renewing and preserving the cultural heritage, development of the Jewish community, financing culture, education and other events, ensuring social assistance to the low-income members of the community and Holocaust victims.

The draft proposal also envisaged returning properties, such as former synagogues, that belonged to the Jewish organizations before the Soviet occupation.