By RAF CASERT
Associated Press Writer
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - David Susskind survived the Holocaust by fleeing to Switzerland, eventually joining the French Resistance. When he returned to Belgium after the war, he had nothing.
His mother, a widow, died in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Strangers were living in his family home in Antwerp. The local grocer greeted him with shock, saying, ``You're still alive?''
"We lost everything. There was nothing,'' said Susskind, now 82.
On Tuesday, Belgium's banks and government sought to make material amends, announcing $170 million in restitution for the Jewish community and families of Holocaust survivors whose property and goods were looted by Nazi occupiers.
Overall, $54 million will be paid to individual claimants, with the rest going to a Jewish trust that will help the poor and keep the memory of the horrors of World War II alive.
``In a certain way, justice has been done. Unfortunately, there are people who never came back'' from the Nazi death camps, said Eli Ringer, the co-chair of the committee on the restitution of Jewish assets.
Some 50,000 Jews lived in Belgium in the 1930s and about half died in the Holocaust....(Click here for remainder of article)
