URO-byrån för rättshjälp

  • URO Legal Aid Office
Identifier
URO-byrån för rättshjälp
Language of Description
English
Dates
1953 - 1975
Level of Description
Collection
Languages
  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Polish
  • Swedish
Scripts
  • Latin
Source
EHRI

Extent and Medium

53,3 linear meters of textual material.

Biographical History

At the end of 1953, a legal aid office was opened in Stockholm to assist Jewish refugees and survivors who wished to claim compensation under a law adopted by the Federal Republic of Germany on the obligation to compensate victims of Nazism (Bundesergänzungsgesetz 1953, replaced in 1956 by Bundesentschädigungsgesetz, BEG). The office was organized in 1954 in Stockholm, belonging to the London-based Jewish organization United Restitution Office, later United Restitution Organization (URO). The office was run with the administrative assistance of the congregation.

With the support of the URO branches in Germany, the URO office in Stockholm represented the interests of Jews living in Sweden in Germany before the authorities and the courts. The URO operated on a social basis. People who had sufficient means were instead referred to other law firms. The office, thus, dealt with individual claims for damages under West German (and, for a time, Austrian) laws on compensation and restitution for victims of Nazism (so-called 'Wiedergutmachung').

The Bureau was headed by Dr. Wilhelm Michaeli, formerly director of the Emigration Department of the Jewish Community of Stockholm. Michaeli was himself a German legal expert in exile in Sweden. On his retirement as head of the Bureau in March 1966, another legal expert, Ruth Liebenthal, took over. Liebenthal had worked with Michaeli for many years both in the Emigration Department, where she had succeeded Michaeli as head in 1953 until the formal closure of the department in 1956, and in the URO office.

In 1974, the department's activities were scaled down and it left its separate offices and moved to the premises of the Jewish Community. The activities were gradually phased out in 1975.

Acquisition

The archive is included as a sub-archive of the Jewish Community of Stockholm's archive, which was deposited with the National Archives in 1983, with several additional deliveries later.

Scope and Content

The archive contains a card index to compensation cases from 1953 to 1975 and over 600 personal files with several thousand compensation cases in the same period.

The claims files contain both standardized personal data about the clients, such as age, gender, origin, religious affiliation, and information about the crimes they suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime in Germany. The applications also contain testimonies written by the applicants about the crimes they suffered. These accounts are detailed but often very factual and concise as they are shaped by the legal process in which they were made. The files contain various forms of supporting documentation, witness statements, certificates, etc. In addition, there is extensive correspondence between legal aid office staff and clients.

Conditions Governing Access

The archive contains privacy-sensitive information, and special conditions are applied to access the documents.

Access to the archive must be approved by the general secretary of the Jewish Community of Stockholm. The application form can be found on the community’s website: https://jfst.se/fler-tjaenster/oevriga-tjaenster/slaekt-och-personforskning/

Finding Aids

Related Units of Description

  • Similar older restitution files can be found in the archives of the Jewish Community of Stockholm's Bureau for Legal Information (Juridiska byrån SE/RA/730128/03/10).

    Some of the files of people who sought compensation on their own, e.g. with the help of law firms, are stored at the respective law firms. Among others, the archive of the law firm Julius Hepner (SE/RA/740006) and the archive of Advokat Ernst Baburger (SE/RA/740027) contain files relating to damages cases.

Sources

  • The archivists Lars Hallberg and Mikaela Nybohm's archival description and index in NAD: https://sok.riksarkivet.se/arkiv/UkdubwsR3KEqw8TXja05z2

    Carlsson, Carl Henrik. Källor till judarnas historia i Sverige: arkivguide. Täby: Riksarkivet, 2022.

    Hansson, Svante. Flykt och överlevnad. Flyktingverksamhet i Mosaiska Församlingen i Stockholm 1933--1950. Stockholm: Hillelförlaget, 2004.

    Michaeli, Wilhelm. Ersättning åt offer för nationalsocialistisk förföljelse (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz) och därmed sammanhängande spörsmål. Stockholm: Nordiska Bokhandeln, 1957.

    Rudberg Pontus. 'Holocaust Testimonies in Jewish Compensation Claims in the United Restitution Organisation’s Archive in Stockholm.' In Johannes Heuman and Rudberg, Pontus (eds.) Early Holocaust Memory in Sweden : Archives, Testimonies and Reflections. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; 2020. p. 93–117.

Rules and Conventions

EHRI Guidelines for Description v.1.0

People

Subjects

Places