Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Guide to English-Language ...

USHMM, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies � 161
RG-28.005 --- Case files of the United Restitution Organization - Toronto Office
This collection contains more than 100 boxes with inactive case files of Jewish Holocaust
survivors who claimed restitution for suffering and damage resulting from persecution by
the Nazis. The records are divided into six major groups.
1. Records entilted ―BEG‖ (Bundesentschädigungsgsetz or Federal
Compensation/Restitution Law). The BEG files contain one-time-only claims.
2. Records entitled ―URO.‖ These files contain general claims for restitution.
3. Cases entitled ―Jewelry,‖ which concern claims of restitution relating to stolen
jewelry.
4. Cases entitled ―Hungary,‖ which deal only with Jews born in Hungary.
5. Records entitled ―Austria,‖ [which deal only with Jews born in Austria?].
In general, the Toronto URO files concern life in Nazi-occupied Europe, life in
concentration camps, and the experiences of survivors. Among the documents are sworn
testimonies of witnesses, indemnity claims, correspondence with doctors and lawyers,
medical reports, and memoirs. The sixth series includes restitution case files, arranged
alphabetically by the surname of the claimant, which were received as an accretion to the
original accession in 1999. Provenance: The United Restitution Organization (URO) is
an American organization functioning as a liaison between Holocaust survivors and
German reparations agencies.
Languages: English, German Ca. 1933–Ca. 1989
275.8 cubic feet
Source of Acquisition: Toronto, Canada, URO office
Restrictions: On access and use
Accession 1996.A.0431 --- Janet Rogowsky Memoirs
This collection includes a three-part memoir, Part I of which is a history of Janet
Rogowsky‘s birthplace, Ostrog (Ukraine) and of its Jewish community. Part II is a
description of her family‘s experiences during the Soviet occupation of Ostrog in 1939;
her family‘s flight to Lvov, Poland (now L‘viv, Ukraine), while she remained in Ostorg
with her married sister so she could continue her education; her reunion with her family
in Lvov in 1941; the pogroms against Lvov Jews following the Nazi capture of the city in
1941 when her father and brother, Grisha, were killed; her mother‘s temporary success at
obtaining working papers for herself, Janet, and Janet‘s sister, Anya, thus avoiding
deportation to the ghetto; her mother‘s arrest and transport to Treblinka early in 1942; her
and Anya‘s decision to go to Germany where they separated, and each of them posed as
Christians working as domestics on various farms and estates; her return to Lvov after the
defeat of Germany where she attended school under her assumed Christian name; and her
move to Warsaw where she worked with war orphans and met her future husband, Feliks
Puterman, a Polish painter and fellow survivor. Part III concerns Rogowsky‘s postwar
experiences in Warsaw where she contacted the American Jewish Joint Distribution