Committee for Private Property (CPP) - Legal News

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
234 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 2020515-6460

Commissioners Appeal for Property Restitution
For Immediate Release September 30, 1996
Contact: Chadwick R. Gore or Erika B. Schlager (202) 225-1901

Washington, DC--Sixteen congressional Members of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe today introduced identical resolutions in the House and Senate addressing the problem of property claims stemming from Fascist and Communist era confiscations. In particular, the resolutions:

  • urge countries which have not already done so to return plundered properties to their rightful owners or, in the alternative, pay compensation;
  • call for the urgent return of property formerly belonging to Jewish communities as a means of redressing the particularly compelling problems of aging and destitute survivors of the Holocaust;
  • call on the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and any other country to remove restrictions which require those whose properties have been wrongfully plundered by Nazi or Communist regimes to reside in or have the citizenship of the country from which they now seek restitution or compensation; and
  • call upon foreign financial institutions that possess wrongfully and illegally confiscated property from Holocaust victims and others to restore this property to its rightful owners.
    • The resolutions follow a July 18 hearing on this subject convened by the Commission.

    In a related move, CSCE Chairman Representative Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ) and Co-Chairman Senator Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY) sent a letter on Sept. 23 to Secretary of State Warren Christopher urging that these issues be raised with visiting Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus. The letter raises the problem faced by Czech Americans who, because they fled Communist persecution and sought refuge in the United States, lost both their citizenship and their property, and are thus excluded under the current Czech restitution law. Moreover, the U.N. Human Rights Committee has determined that the citizenship requirement in the Czech restitution law violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The full texts of the resolutions and of the letter to Mr. Christopher are available from the Commission at (202) 225-1901.

    URL: http://www.romhome.org/legal_news/subject_08.html
    Updated: August 28, 1998