OUR
PRACTICE
Restitution of Property in Israel
Restitution of Property in Israel -
Historically, between the 1920's and the 1940's, the Diaspora Jews acquired land in
the pre-state Israel either for ideological reasons of “Redemption of the Land”, setting grounds for of an alternative domicile with the unknown outcome of the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and even as an economical investment which also served the buyer's ideological needs or conscience. Many of these investors were from
the United States, United Kingdom and continental Europe, each setting foot in the future Jewish homeland for his own reason.
In addition to investing in real property in Palestine, many have taken additional
steps of opening a business, investing in an existing business, opening bank accounts, deposit boxes and purchasing of
stock shares in new born Jewish Companies, often themselves involved in the purchase of urban or agricultural land and buildings.
Beginning in 1939, a substantial part of these investments which were made by Jews from Germany and Austria
or by Jews from countries that were soon overran by the Third Reich,
were seized by the British Mandate authorities under the pretext of property belonging to the enemy, notwithstanding the fact that the investors themselves were the prime victims of the Nazi atrocity.
Many of the seized properties were later transferred to the "General Guardianship" (which began to operate in 1944 by a special decree) with most of the monies and deposits remaining in the hands of the banks. In regard to the real-estate assets, the greater part of these remained in the hands of those same companies trading in land or in the hands of the Jewish National Fund in order to "keep them in Jewish hands". Other properties were transferred to the "General Guardianship of Enemy Assets".
At the end of the Second World War, it became clear that many of the investors had perished in the Holocaust.
Survivors and inheritors of those who perished that tried to reclaim their property met a bureaucratic barrier by these same bodies
which held the properties rendering the survivors or the heirs efforts practically unrealistic. People who survived the Holocaust were requested to prove by documents their own eligibility
for the assets in a manner which, at the time was impossible, out of clear motives on the part of those bodies to continue to hold the assets, with a view that with the passage of time, the proof of ownership or eligibility of these assets would become more difficult.
Today, the Administrator-General of the State of Israel or the Company for Restitution of Holocaust Victims Assets manages many of these properties. Under the Israeli law, the government of Israel is entitled to nationalize managed properties which were not claimed for 15 years and if the property is managed by the Company for Restitution of Holocaust Victims Assets, the property's proceeds are supposed to be
used for Holocaust Survivors related purposes.
The facilitating of restitution of these Jewish properties has become a specialty of the Hoyzman & Cirkin Law Firm.
For over the past ten years, we have managed to release numerous such seized properties and transfer them to their rightful owners.
As part of the Restitution Process, we take all the required legal steps to locate the "lost" properties,
obtain the required probate and inheritance orders, prove the inheritor's right to the seized properties and pursuing with all the
relevant bureaucratic and judicial bodies until the property is finally released and restored to its rightful new-old owners.
After the release of a property to its rightful owners and when a sale of such property is requested or required, Hoyzman & Cirkin will handle all the legal aspects of the sale includingdealing with all the applicable taxation issues.
Genealogical Services -
Adv. Arad Hoyzman a member of The Israel Genealogical Society (IGS).
In a property restitution proceeding, the heir applicant is required to furnish a succession order (or probate order) in the country in which the property is situated. Our firm’s special expertise in succession law and
genealogy provides a solution to such challenges. The expertise of a registered and trained genealogist is paramount not only in the recovering of assets justly or unjustly seized by the State of Israel or confiscated by the Third Reich but also to provide the necessary documents to set forth a successful reclaim of the property. The fate of many heirs of Holocaust victims’ claims to recover such family assets are decided by the ability to find all the original property owner’s heirs and to obtain the applicable succession orders.
Constructing a Jewish family tree by obtaining appropriate documentation is a skill that requires special expertise. Tracing your Jewish family history may be the key to retrieving unclaimed Holocaust-era assets or properties in Israel which were purchased by your ancestors at a time that they did not give any financial significance to their purchase in a remote region of the world. Recently, with the collapse of the Iron Curtain and Communism in Eastern Europe, additional pre war and war-era European and German documents captured by the Soviet government have become available to enhance this process.
In addition, Hoyzman & Cirkin works in cooperation with genealogy companies and genealogists around the world who provide comprehensive solutions to building complete Jewish family trees. Our firm can provide the genealogy services necessary to make the restitution of your property possible. We can obtain full documentation from almost anywhere in the world required for handling succession proceedings. Locating information about relatives to formulate legal rights is among the servicers that we provide.