PARIS -- From lucrative businesses to sewing machines, Jewish assets seized by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime have long been the unwritten chapter of France's systematic persecution and deportation of Jews during World War II.
On Monday, the country's justice minister unveiled the legal framework for helping Jews get reparations for property seized during World War II.Justice Minister Elisabeth Guigou's announcement came on the heels of a declaration Saturday that Jewish children orphaned during the Holocaust will for the first time receive monetary compensation for their suffering.
Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's government appears eager to show its willingness to address the reparation issue and avoid the risk that Jewish organizations outside France will intervene, as has happened in Switzerland and with some private German companies.
Following Monday's announcement, some French Jews who had long given up hope that the government would compensate their losses said they would appeal to the commission.
After the war, Fernand Elie, now 78, returned to Paris to discover a shoe salesman living and working in the family apartment. All the family's belongings had disappeared.
"The man said he didn't know the apartment belonged to Jews, and he refused to give it back unless we paid for the renovations he had just completed," Elie said in a telephone interview. "As for compensation, city hall gave us a couple of folding beds and a cheap wooden armoire."
Elie's father, sister and brother were arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where they died.
Vichy-era laws banned Jews from many professions, including teaching, medicine and law, and prohibited them from owning businesses, bicycles and radios.
Some received modest sums after the war, but most did not.
"The determination to abolish this terrible legislation after the liberation must not allow us to forget that this legislation existed," Guigou told members of the newly established Drai Commission., formed to process reparation requests.
Headed by Pierre Drai, honorary president of France's highest court, the Court of Cassation, the commission is to begin meeting in coming weeks to process several thousand requests from individuals seeking restitution.
Drai said the requests -- from Jews all over the world -- were sent to the Matteoli commission, a government-appointed blue-ribbon panel examining how Vichy seized Jewish assets, froze Jewish bank accounts, stole stock certificates and liquidated life insurance policies, rendering Jews increasingly vulnerable to arrest and deportation.
Some 76,000 Jews were deported from France to Nazi death camps, including 12,000 children, between 1941-44. Only 2,500 survived.
Drai said at least 1,000 requests flooded in from Israel after an article about the commission appeared in the English-language Jerusalem Post.
He said it would take the commission about six months to handle each case.