Latvia moves ahead with “good will” restitution of pre-war Jewish property

The Latvian parliament or Saeima on September 30 voted to move ahead with plans to allocate EUR 40 million over the next 10 years in restitution payments for Jewish properties seized during the Soviet occupation of the Baltic country and left unclaimed when Latvia regained its independence because 90 percent of Latvia’s wartime Jewish population was killed in the Holocaust.

The draft law, approved by a vote of 61 to 13 in the parliament, is an act of good will toward Latvia’s Jewish community and assumes no responsibility for confiscation of property by the Soviet regime after June, 1940 and for the destruction of Latvia’s Jews under the German occupation from 1941 to 1945.

Dmitrijs Krupņikovs, deputy chairman of the Latvian Council of Jewish Communities told this writer he was “very pleased” with the progress of the law and also stressed that it was not an assumption of guilt by anyone for the harm done to Latvia’s Jews during the Soviet and Nazi occupations. He said that the annual payments of EUR 4 million would be almost exclusively spent in Latvia for Jewish cultural, religious and educational purposes, as well as to promote the integration of various religions and ethnicities in Latvia.

“I can see supporting the efforts of non-Jewish researchers to write about Latvian Jewish history or intercommunity relations,” Krupņikovs said, adding that all spending of funds would be overseen by the Latvian Finance Ministry.