Belgium

Nazi Germany invaded Belgium in 1940 and occupied the country until 1944. More than 26,000 Jews were deported from Belgium during the Holocaust and less than 2,000 of them survived. Owing to unique aspects of Belgian law still in force during the occupation, less than 10 percent of Jewish real estate was sold by the German occupying power. Most private property that came under German administration was rented out and the proceeds put into blocked accounts for the benefit of the original property owners. After the war, there was no organized process for seeking payment of the rental account balances or for seeking restitution or compensation for real estate that had been sold by the German administration. In the late 1990s, the Belgian government’s Study Commission—established to examine the fate of Jewish property during the war—found it difficult to identify any remaining unrestituted immovable property because of the ad hoc manner of its return after the war. Notwithstanding this difficulty, an Indemnification Commission was established in 2001 to compensate individuals whose property (immovable and movable) had not been previously compensated/returned. Belgium endorsed the Terezin Declaration in 2009 and the Guidelines and Best Practices in 2010.