| Serbian Jews protest restitution policy |
| 2 February 2007 | 13:09
| Source:
Beta |
NOVI SAD --
Serbia is the only country in Europe that has not ensured the restitution of stolen Jewish property.
“Nothing has been done on the issue, even when there was a chance”, Aca Singer, president of the Union of Jewish Communities, told Novi Sad daily Dnevnik. He reminded that Jews in Serbia were robbed of their property from 1941 to 1944, under the regime of Milan Nedić, who collaborated with Nazi German occupation forces in Serbia.
He estimated that the deadline for the restitution expired last year. The Law on Churches and Religious Communities set the time limit, providing only for the restitution of the property taken away during the communist regime.
Singer added that private Jewish property should be given back in line with the Restitution Act which takes 1945 as the base year.
“We still hope that the new government will comprehend the degree of injustice done to the Jewish community and take concrete action”, Singer said.
He criticized minister Milan Parivodić for claiming he had contacted the representatives of the Jewish community in Serbia regarding the property issue, adding that Parivodić in fact has never replied to the letters the Jewish community officials had sent him.
Taking part in B92 TV’s Replika program, Parivodić, a Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) official, addressed the leader of the Social Democratic Union Žarko Korać saying, “He should stand still whenever the name of general Milan Nedić is mentioned, for the general saved the Serbian people from engaging in a horrible civil war”
Aca Singer explained that the Quisling government of Milan Nedić collaborated with the Germans in “dealing with the Jewish issue” and passed a decision to rob the Jewish community of their property.
“Milan Nedić had done something that nobody even asked him to do. The Jewish community members were among the officers taken into custody after the April war in 1944. Unfortunately, Nedić personally requested that the Jewish officers be separated form Serbs ‘so as not to contaminate them’. We all know what happened to them after that”, Singer concluded.
Dnevnik writes that the Novi Sad Jewish community is currently collecting documentation on the confiscated property and plans to submit a restitution request to the authorities.
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