Full Thread: Hungary
View Single Post
Old March 28th, 2010 #33
alex revision
Senior Member
 
alex revision's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 27,577
Default

Holocaust victims, heirs sue 5 Hungarian banks at US court

http://english.mti.hu/default.asp?me...&newsid=268524

Budapest, March 27 (MTI) - A group of Holocaust survivors and heirs filed a lawsuit in Chicago on Thursday against several banks, including banks based in Hungary, demanding compensation of more than 2 million dollars.

According to the plaintiffs, the National Bank of Hungary, the Erste Group Bank, the MKB Bayerische Landesbank and OTP Bank or their predecessors participated in the Holocaust, they were accomplices and instigators by appropriating the assets of Jewish victims.

The affected banks in Hungary told MTI on Saturday that they had not yet received a statement of claim and were therefore unable to react.

The plaintiffs, who call themselves "Holocaust victims of bank theft" in the document submitted to the Illinois Northern District Court, also demand criminal compensation on top of the 2 million dollars plus interest.

According to the claim, the banks appropriated the funds held in the accounts of Jewish Holocaust victims, as well as jewellery, art objects and securities stored in their security safes.

In February this year, a similar lawsuit was filed against Hungarian state railways MAV, demanding compensation for the company's involvement in deporting Jews during WWII. The plaintiffs in that case, who are mostly descendants of Holocaust survivors living in Israel and the US, demand compensation worth a total of 240 million dollars. Based on nine years of research, they claim that MAV provided its carriages "being fully aware" that these would be used to transport 437,000 Jews to the gas chambers in Auschwitz between March and October 1944.

Head of the Hungarian Jewish federation Mazsihisz Peter Feldmajer said earlier that "no legal action can be brought against MAV on moral grounds," adding that it is the Hungarian state, not one company that is responsible for compliance in the murders and theft of Jewish posessions during World War II.