URO-byrån för rättshjälp

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.

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.