In the face of Nazi oppression, some Jews deposited assets abroad

British Banks Seized Holocaust Victims' Assets - Report

The publication of the report coincides with a campaign by international Jewish organisations to retrieve money deposited by Holocaust victims in Swiss bank accounts.

In Britain, all enemy assets were frozen during the war. However, some of the money had been deposited by Jews from countries such as Germany, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

According to the Holocaust Educational Trust, the account holders were not paid back after the war. Instead, the money went to British companies as compensation for trading losses.

In addition, the Trust accuses Britain's banks and financial institutions of profiting from Jewish assets and says that, as in Switzerland, there are dormant accounts in British banks belonging to Jewish victims of the Nazis.

The total value of the accounts is said to be £30 million at 1939 prices. So strict was the definition of who was persecuted that the claims of bona fide victims' were rejected. Jews who managed to hide from the Nazis, whose relatives had committed suicide or who had been imprisoned in labour camps rather than death camps, were not compensated.

The Trust wants banks and the Government to publish lists of all victims accounts. Lord Janner, the Chairman of the Trust and a former Labour MP, said: "The British government behaved in an understandable way, but what they did was sad and regrettable. In retrospect, it was a grave mistake not to make a clear distinction between the Nazis and their victims."

A spokesman for the Department of Trade and Industry said the DTI and the Foreign Office were trying to identify the relevant documents and that the results of the investigation would be made public.