Financiarul

State Secretary for Strategic Affairs Bogdan Aurescu will attend the International Conference on the Holocaust Era Assets on June 29 and 30, an event organised by the European Union Czech president in Prague, the Romanian foreign ministry announced in a release on Saturday.

The Romanian delegation also includes MP Aurel Vainer, who is the president of the Jewish Communities Federation of Romania and Daniel Anghel, the director of the Directorate for the coordination of the Technical Secretariats of the Special Commission on the return of seized property, which is part of the National Authority on Property Restitution.

The conference addresses the issues relating the damages paid to the victims of the Nazis, the return of property, objects and cultural assets seized from the Jews during World War Two, the issues of the education on the Holocaust and the problems relating the social assistance to the survivors.

Aurescu will make an address to the plenary session on Monday in which he will unveil the Romanian legislation and experience in the matters being discussed, with special emphasis on the process of the return of seized possessions.

He will also underscore Romania’s commitment to keeping alive the memory of the tragic experience of the Holocaust and to combating all forms of intolerance, discrimination and racial hatred, the release said.

The conference, which brings together delegates from 49 countries, is a follow-up to a 1998 meeting in
Washington that led to agreements on recovering art looted by the Nazis, as well as to the 2000 Stockholm Conference on the Holocaust education and the 2000 Declaration of the Vilnius Forum.

The conference debates will be carried out in a plenary session and five working groups, with four of them focusing on the commemoration of the Holocaust, the property return, the situation of the Jewish art objects, cultural and religious property and a special session devoted to the issues of the social assistance for the survivors, the foreign ministry said.