Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my PhD tutor, Prof. José Brunner, and my PhD reviewer, Prof. Michael Bazyler, for encouraging me to publish this book. I also appreciate the constructive recommendations of the two anonymous reviewers of this manuscript.
My heartfelt thanks to Sydney Zabludoff (1932–2024) for his invaluable help on the estimates of the value of Holocaust looted Jewish assets and its restitution. Thanks to Prof. Matthias Weller for his most professional help in retrieving Nazi-looted art. Many thanks to Ms. Halyna Senyk for her immense help in regards to the European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI). My thanks also go to my good friend Prof. Raphael Cohen-Almagor, who advised and guided me, sharing his vast experience with me. I also thank my devoted editor, Ulrike Guthrie, for her professional, intelligent, and meticulous work and for her continued support and advice.
I acknowledge with gratitude the support that Katerina Sofianou, Associate Editor at De Gruyter Brill and Janelle Mae Eusebio, Production Editor, has provided.
I presented papers addressing different aspects of this research at the Tel Aviv University, Charles University in Prague, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, annual conferences for the Association of Israel Studies (AIS), and in my articles published both in the Israeli press, and with academic presses, such as “How Restitution of Property of Shoah (Holocaust) Victims was Carried Out in Israel,” Loyola of Los Angeles International & Comparative Law Review 41, no. 3 (Winter 2018): 617–676.
Every reasonable effort has been made to identify and contact the copyright holders of the images. Some of the materials were sourced from websites now preserved by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has stated that it does not hold copyright. Use of these images is believed to fall under the fair use provision of US copyright law for scholarly and historical purposes.
Without the love and support of my extended family, I would have neither begun nor finished this odyssey. Thank you, Gal, Dorit, Rotem, Alon, Pnina, Itzhak, Elad, Nofi, Oded, Naama, Yaara, Meir, Neta, and Noa.
Nurit, my beloved. Without your full trust in me and without your help and encouragement I would never have finished this book. You encouraged me to start it earlier rather than later and you were there for me on both sunny as well as on rainy days. I am obliged to you for that from the bottom of my heart.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of Noah Flug (1925–2011), and Moshe Sanbar (1926–2012), both Holocaust survivors, former board members of the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO), and heads of the Center of Organizations for Holocaust Survivors in Israel. I had a very special relationship with them. The three of us all had careers at the Ministry of Finance, and therefore we had a common “language.” I learned from them and was guided by them. And to Efraim Jermans (1931–2024) my much-appreciated first superior at the Ministry of Finance, who taught me how to deal with numbers, and how to be truthful, bold, accountable, and precise, thus enabling me to write a much more compelling book.