Holocaust survivors plead for property

Nate Leipciger was just 11 when he was forced to leave his home in Nazi-occupied Chorzow, an industrial town in Poland.

He grabbed his two most cherished belongings — a box of tools and a stamp album — but they, too, would eventually be snatched away.

“It was very traumatic,” he recalls. “Suddenly I had to leave everything behind.”

More than seven decades later, Leipciger — who spent three years in a Nazi-run ghetto — is leading a charge in Canada to push central and Eastern European governments to return property taken from Jews during the Holocaust.

On Thursday, Leipciger, who moved to Canada with his father in 1948, was part of a delegation that wrapped up two days of meetings in Ottawa with the ambassadors from Bosnia, Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine and the European Union.

Their goal: to make sure each country follows through oncommitmentsmadeinthe 2009 Terezin Declaration and implement a framework for restitution.

Some countries, including Slovenia and Poland, are lagging behind, said Richard Marceau, senior government adviser to the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, which worked with the World Holocaust Restitution Organization to co-ordinate this week’s diplomatic meetings.