Prague: History uncovered

From the Prague Post comes a story focusing on the Israeli government list of account holders made public in 2005.

Active in Holocaust-era restitution and claims, Tomas Jelinek of Prague found family among the names listed.

His great-grandfather Adolf Krokauer, his wife and four children were expelled from their home in Teplice in 1938. He arrived in Prague and began making plans to leave, deposited funds in a foreign bank.

“At that time it was still OK for Czech Jews to leave,” Jelínek says. “He was trying to get his family to Palestine.”

In 1941, the family was rounded up before they could move and taken to the Lodz Ghetto where five perished. Jelinek's grandmother was the only survivor. Today, Margarete Jansky, 86, lives in Vienna. At the time, she was married and the couple were sent to Terezinstadt and then to Auschwitz.

Although eligible to make a claim, "she must endure the wearisome process involved in most restitution cases, each of which is decided on an individual basis."

Says Jelinek, she knows about the claim but cannot fill out the forms; she is already too old. He plans to submit a claim for her.

Read more here.