Burial society sued over cash-for-tomb request

A LONDON financier’s grave in a continental cemetery has remained unadorned for four years because the local burial society is demanding 100,000 euros for a tombstone, his representatives say.

The family and executors of the estate of the late Albert Fuss, who died in 2012, aged 76, have asked the Belgian courts to intervene in order to put up a commemorative stone.

Mr Fuss is buried next to his mother, Rosa, in a cemetery in Putte, Holland, administered by the nearby Machsike Hadass community of Antwerp.

But the chairman of Machsike Hadass, Pinchas Kornfeld, has defended the demand for a substantial contribution before agreeing to a tombstone.

The Belgian-born Mr Fuss, who was married with a daughter, was said by the Sunday Times Rich List to be worth £90 million in the year of death.

Roger Tabakin, an executor, said that they had paid £10,000 for him to be buried and deplored the demand for more money.

The Fuss family had already donated more than 100,000 euros to Jewish charities in Antwerp over the past four years and would be considering further gifts, he said.

But, he explained, “we can only pay into a registered charity. Pinchas Kornfeld has not been able to nominate a registered charity.”

He added, “We have turned to the courts only after the efforts of many people to resolve the matter have failed. We are hopeful that the courts will order Mr Kornfeld and his colleagues to drop their demands and to allow us to erect a tombstone over Albert’s grave.” Mr Kornfeld, who put an ad ( above) in last week’s JC to say that the Orthodox community of Antwerp was “pained” over the affair, said this week that his community had no fixed funeral fees.

“Rich people pay more and poor people are mostly buried free of charge,” he said, “More than 50 per cent of the burials don’t even pay enough to cover the expenses. This is our way of charity.”

He claimed that Mr Fuss had asked the Belgian community to bury him several years before his death.

“Generally, we don’t accept people from abroad and non-members,” he said. “However, since his mother was buried in Putte, we would accept him.”

But there had never been any agreement about the cost of burial either orally or in writing, he argued.

He said that the Machsike Hadass had been flexible “and went so far as to create a charity foundation” in the name of Mr Fuss. “Unfortunately, all solutions were rejected and the executors took us to court.”

The matter was now “sub judice,” he said.