President Rivlin thanks Serbia over Holocaust restitution law

Israel’s top statesman tells Serbian leader Aleksandar Vucic that bill should serve as a model for other countries

By AP 26 July 2018, 4:24 pm

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President Reuven Rivlin, left, shakes hands with his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic at the Serbia Palace in Belgrade, Serbia, July 26, 2018. (Darko Vojinovic/AP)

BELGRADE, Serbia — President Reuven Rivlin praised Serbia for passing a law that allows for the restitution to the Jewish community of heirless and unclaimed Jewish property seized during the Holocaust.

Reuven Rivlin said Thursday after talks with Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic that the 2016 bill should serve as a model for other countries.

Thousands of Serbian Jews perished during Nazi occupation of the Balkan country during World War II.

Rivlin has arrived in Serbia from neighboring Croatia where he met with top officials and visited the site of a WWII concentration camp run by a pro-Nazi puppet regime where tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Roma were killed.

Croatian state TV has quoted Rivlin as saying that facing up to crimes of the past is a moral obligation for any society.