In this week’s Reporters Roundtable podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by reporter Paul Berger to discuss how employees of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany falsely claimed $57 million meant for Holocaust victims. Then, Forward fellow Anne Cohen describes the challenges and opportunities facing America’s new rabbis. Finally, deputy arts editor Ezra…
The federal courtroom in Manhattan was notably empty considering the eye-catching size and target of the fraud: a 15-year campaign to falsely claim $57 million meant for some of the world’s neediest Holocaust survivors. Only a smattering of friends and relatives of the three accused were in the 26th-floor courtroom for the climactic closing statements…
Three people, including two former employees of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, have been convicted for stealing $57 million intended for Holocaust victims. Semen Domnitser—who was the director of two of the Claims Conference’s funds from 1999 to 2010—Oksana Romalis, who left the Claims Conference before the fraud was discovered, and a…
Federal prosecutors are trying to prevent a jury from hearing evidence that a multimillion-dollar fraud at a non-profit which processes Holocaust claims is even more widespread than the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office have so far revealed. The prosecutors, from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office, are also trying to prevent defense lawyers from arguing…
Jews who owned property in what would become East Germany have a last chance to receive compensation for it. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany published on its website a list of Jews who owned property in eastern Germany before the beginning of the Nazi era. The list, which contains thousands of entries,…
A war crimes investigator cast fresh doubts on the autobiographical account of a purported Holocaust survivor living in Australia who says he was a child mascot for Nazis. Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, wrote to officials last week at the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany,…
A former caseworker for an organization that aids survivors of Nazi persecution was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison Friday for her participation in a $57 million fraud scheme. Polina Breyter, an employee of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, also was ordered by U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Griesa in Manhattan…
The Hungarian government has urged the Claims Conference to “refrain from misleading, intentionally misguiding and provoking fear.” The announcement, which was recently published on the government’s website, is the latest escalation in a vociferous exchange which began last month, as the Hungarian government froze money transfers to the Claims Conference citing poor reporting. The Claims…
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