Govt agency seeking heirs of Holocaust victims' land

Many who died in the Holocaust owned land in Israel; Hashava tries to trace the owners.

The story blends historical drama, Zionism, values, and justice. But, the matter can also be viewed from a more materialistic angle: if you are a descendant of someone who died in the Holocaust, you may be the legal heir to real estate you don’t know about.

Hashava, the Holocaust Restitution Company of Israel, currently holds 1,424 dunam (352 acres) of land in Israel, in 33 towns, some in the heart of high-demand areas. The company was founded with the goal of finding the legal heirs, who are unaware of their status, and to hand the properties over to them.

Righting a wrong

Some background: In the 1930s, and even earlier, many Jews living in the diaspora bought land in the Holy Land.

Reasons for buying real estate in what was Palestine during the time of the British Mandate varied, but it seems that most did so with the goal of actually moving here. A deposit of 1,000 pounds sterling (worth roughly NIS 500,000, or $143,295, today), bought an expedited permit to move to Palestine as an “asset holder.” There were those who deposited the sum in one of the local banks, and there were those who chose to invest in real estate - an orchard, for instance.

Some of the investors came to Palestine, chose the land, and returned to Europe to make arrangements to emigrate. Others operated from afar, through a lawyer with power of attorney, who would represent a few investors, choose the land, and take mortgages in their names. Another interesting initiative was group purchases. These groups formed in Europe as religious associations (such as “Nahlat Ya’akov,” which built Kfar Hasidim, or “Nahlat Yosef,” which bought land in Afula), and bought land from real-estate marketers (such as the Palestine Land Development Company) as a group, generally in areas that held significant Zionist promise. In Afula, for instance, such lands were bought based on the assumption that the city would become a cultural hub in the Promised Land. A representative from the marketing company would manage the division of the land on their behalf, and would return to them with their deeds in hand. These purchasing groups were at their peak at the outbreak of World War II. And then the world went dark.

Hashava has been operating since 2006 to identify and return assets belonging to Holocaust victims as a statutory entity, responsible for locating the heirs to the properties. The company is not under the auspices of any government ministry, and its budget approval is renewed annually, and is derived from the value of the assets under management.

The official company goal is “to bring about historicl justice for the victims and reinstate the assets of Holocaust victims located in Israel to their rightful beneficiaries.” The Location and Information division is headed by Adv. Elinor Kroitoru, who says that the project involves real detective work. The company is looking to return various types of assets - stocks and land - the most complicated of which are those that were bought by the historic purchasing groups.

“The war started, and buyers had no way to continue making payments. Because the situation was forced upon them, it is a legal issue,” explains Kroitoru. “Companies that bought and maintained orchards encountered hardship. There were some who sold the land to another entity. They said that if the original buyer showed up, his money would be returned. There were those that transferred the land to the mandatory land trustee, who viewed these assets as confiscated property, as its source was in an enemy country.” In retrospect, the transfer of ownership was a good thing. The British documented everything, and saved every document, and when the State of Israel was established, the orphan lands were transferred to the Administrator General, who then handed them over to Hashava, to hold until they were claimed.

The company locates not only heirs, but also the lost properties themselves.

Kroitoru: “Of course there are also lands that were paid for in full, but the owners were killed, and no one know that they were even sold to them. We are trying to find them too. Only after we find the land will we be able to investigate what happened to its owners.”

How do you look for these properties?

“We take archival material - information about buyers - and investigate what happened to the land. In parallel, we check aerial photographs and Tabu (Land Registry) records. If, for example, we discover that there are buildings with an empty lot between them, that’s odd. If we discover that the last entry in the Tabu was before 1945, and since then there have been no deals or activity with the land, that’s a red light. In Bat Yam, for example, the municipality issued gardening orders on such lots. That’s a nice step. As soon as we entered the picture, they transferred them to us. These lands are now listed in the Land Registry with a note of our management.”

27 properties with no known heirs were identified in Bat Yam alone. The list of found properties includes more than 30 towns in Israel, and Tel Aviv alone has 43 such properties.

“In Tel Aviv, these are almost always built properties. The vast majority of them were bought as such. We manage the property in the Land Registry when it is listed under the name of a buyer whom we have identified. Until an heir is found, we pay the Arnona (property tax) and charge rent - and the money is collected for the heirs. Sometimes the money collected is more than the value of the property.”

Hashava refrains from providing identifying signs regarding the properties and assets, out of fear that they will be overrun by swindlers. “I can say, for instance, that there are such properties in the Neve Zedek region,” says Kroitoru, “But, based on our experience, we refrain from announcing the exact locations, in order to avoid demands from crooks and groups trying their luck. Various details and names of the dead can be found on our website. We rely on our research, but sometimes we ask for identifying details as well.

“There is an entire array of factors that we check, and it depends also on the value of the property. For large properties, a documented family lineage is necessary, but we also help the families find them, as much as possible.”

By the end of 2017

Recently, the Knesset decided that the timeframe allocated for the company’s operations will conclude at the end of 2017, and not in 2021, as was originally decided. According to Kroitoru, “If we don’t find heirs in the next four years, it won’t ever happen. These lands will be transferred to the Administrator General.”

Hashava is proud of its 40% success rate in finding heirs. Further contributing to the complexity of the process is the fact that only 50% of the heirs live in Israel. “We found them even in Fiji and in Thailand,” says Kroitoru. “Some are no longer Jewish.”

Take, for example, the landbuyer, found by Hashava, who lives today in Warsaw, Poland. “He was very old, and asked to keep the matter private. He said his children don’t even know they are Jewish, and he has asked that, if he dies before the conclusion of the process, we should close the case and not transfer the money to them.”

In another case, the company located agricultural land near Afula that is valued today at roughly NIS 1.5 million. It turns out that the land was bought in the 1930s by a Jew from a small town in Poland, who was killed in the Holocaust, along with his wife and his two children. In their investigation, Hashava succeeded in locating his nephews, themselves Holocaust survivors, who were born in France, and whose parents also died in the Holocaust. Today, two of them live in Israel.

The stories of the properties are also interesting, in light of the fact that many of the buyers had never even seen them. For example, the property near a moshav (agricultural settlement) in central Israel, which turned out to be right on the banks of the Yarkon River, which diminished its value greatly. Because the probate process involves legal fees, it is not certain that claiming the land is worth the investment.

In May, 2013, Hashava filed a lawsuit against the Palestine Land Development Company (PLDC), which was one of the big land marketing companies in Israel active in real estate deals with the large Eastern European purchasing groups in the 1920s and 1930s

According to the claim, the Lodz “Zichron Avraham” purchasing group bought land in Sheik Ibrik, in the Jezreel Valley, in the 1920s. The deal was delayed and cancelled, and, in its place, the group was offered cash compensation or alternate properties in Afula. Some from the group chose land, but then World War II began, and the properties were never registered in the names of the group members.

According to Hashava, in 1957, when no one turned up to claim the properties, PLDC sold them to third parties, who bought them with no knowledge of their history. Hashava is currently asking PLDC to return the sale proceeds according to the current, real value of the lands, which is much higher than their value at the time. There are 20 plots, which, according to Hashava, have a combined estimated value of NIS 5 million - much more, of course, than PLDC received for them more than 55 years ago. The lawsuit is still ongoing, and, meanwhile, Hashava is still looking for the group’s heirs, “in a particularly intricate and complex process.”

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 10, 2014

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2014

Twitter Facebook Linkedin RSS Newsletters âìåáñ Israel Business Conference 2018