Reply #10: U.S. to pay ($25.5M) for seizing WWII loot (Nazi "Gold Train")

[UpInArms]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/11116442.htm

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The U.S. government formally agreed on Friday to pay $25.5 million to redress a controversial historical incident -- the American military's seizure of Nazi loot stolen from Hungarian Jews.

After World War II, the government auctioned off many of the possessions to fund refugee relief efforts rather than trying to return them to their owners, who were either dead or scattered around Europe.

The so-called ''Gold Train'' incident gained widespread notice more than a half century after it happened, the result of a presidential commission and a lawsuit filed by Holocaust survivors -- Jews living in Hungary at the time -- in Miami federal court in 2001.

Many of those who filed the suit had long since emigrated to the United States, Israel and elsewhere. Some have settled in South Florida.

Friday's settlement proposal will allot $25 million, less fees and expenses, to cover basic humanitarian services -- including healthcare -- for Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivors throughout the world. Individual plaintiffs will not receive payments.

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