COMMENT: The Holocaust Industry has extracted $9 Billion from Europe in the name of "needy Holocaust victims." Here, it seems, is where the money will really go . . .

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Buchenwald typhus victims, gate of Auschwitz.

Holocaust foundation set for restitution funds

By Joan Gralla

NEW YORK, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Israel and world Jewish groups plan to set up a foundation that would manage hundreds of millions of dollars the groups stand to get from nearly $9 billion in Holocaust reparations, a Jewish official said on Tuesday.

The Jewish restitution groups likely will use the money for charitable causes such as education and rebuilding European communities that the Nazis stamped out, Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), told Reuters.

The groups are set to get this money because for the past five decades they have been designated as the heirs of the six million people killed by the Nazis.

Claims by individual Holocaust survivors and their relatives will be honored before the money is to be paid to the Jewish groups. Several hundred thousand Jewish Holocaust survivors are still living.

Non-Jewish Holocaust survivors also stand to get reparations. Eastern European forced laborers, for example, should get nearly 70 percent of the $4.8 billion fund for Nazi-era laborers that Germany agreed to in July.

But once these claims are paid, plenty of money is expected to be left for the foundation.

"There will undoubtedly be hundreds of millions of dollars and probably billions of dollars available,'' said Steinberg, adding the new foundation formally will be announced on Sept. 11 in New York.

U.S. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton have been invited to attend, according to Steinberg, as have Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu [right, visitng Auschwitz].

Only a fraction of Holocaust reparation programs have started distributing money. The WJC estimated that when all agreements between Holocaust survivors and Europe and its industries are combined, they will total nearly $9 billion.

That amount includes a $1.25 billion accord Swiss banks reached with Holocaust survivors two years ago and smaller accords such as a $30 million fund set up by Britain because Jewish assets were caught up in a war-time effort to freeze the property owned by enemy nationals.

Website comment: Among the groups not listed in this report who are set to benefit: the Anti Defamation League