A "substantial amount" of property confiscated from European Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust has not been returned, a study claims.

More than 70 years after the end of the Second World War, many states have only partially complied with a law to return or provide compensation for land and businesses confiscated from Jewish communities during the Holocaust.

The Holocaust (Shoah) Immovable Property Restitution Study found several former Communist states in Eastern Europe have not yet fulfilled their obligations under the 2009 Terezin Declaration on Holocaust Era Assets.

The study investigated unresolved issues around private and communal immovable property illegitimately seized from Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

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The Terezin Declaration said no state should benefit from heirless property and special funds should instead be allocated to needy Holocaust survivors, but the study found property that became heirless as a result of the Holocaust often reverted to the state and has not been returned.

There are approximately 500,000 Holocaust survivors alive today and up to half are estimated to live in poverty.

It also found both Poland and Bosnia-Herzegovina have failed to enact any comprehensive legislation covering property taken from Jews during the Holocaust and Communist eras.

Remembering the Holocaust Show all 16 1 /16 Remembering the Holocaust Remembering the Holocaust 80,000 shoes line a display case in Auschwitz I. The shoes of those who had been sent to their deaths were transported back to Germany for use of the Third Reich Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Barracks for prisoners in the vast Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. Here slept as many as four per bunk, translating to around one thousand people per barracks. The barracks were never heated in winter, so the living space of inmates would have been the same temperature as outside. Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Sign for the Auschwitz Museum on the snowy streets of Oswiecim, Poland Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The Gateway to hell: The Nazi proclamation that work will set you free, displayed on the entrance gate of Auschwitz I Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A disused watchtower, surveying a stark tree-lined street through Auschwitz I concentration camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Stolen property of the Jews: Numerous spectacles, removed from the possession of their owners when they were selected to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A sign bearing a skull and crossbones barks an order to a person to stop beside the once-electrified fences which reinforced the Auschwitz I camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The peace and the evil: Flower tributes line a section of wall which was used for individual and group executions Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Life behind bars: Nazi traps set to hold the Third Reich’s ‘enemies’. In Auschwitz’s years of operation, there were around three hundred successful escapes. A common punishment for an escape attempt was death by starvation Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Burying the evidence: Remains of one of the several Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The three-way railway track at the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. This was the first sight the new camp arrivals saw upon completion of their journey. Just beside the tracks, husbands and wives, sons and daughters and brothers and sisters were torn from each other. Most never saw their relatives again Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A group of visitors move through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Viewed from the main entrance watchtower of Auschwitz-Birkenau Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust "The Final Solution": The scale of the extermination efforts of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau can be seen by comparing the scale of the two figures at the far left of the image to the size of the figure to the left of the railway tracks' three point split Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Each cattle car would transport up to one hundred people, who could come from all over Europe, sometimes from as far away as Norway or Greece. Typically, people would have been loaded onto the trucks with around three days food supply. The journey to Auschwitz could sometimes take three weeks. Hannah Bills

It said the largest percentage of heirless property was likely to be found in the Baltic States and Poland, where the overwhelming majority of Jews did not survive the Holocaust.

Poland had the largest Jewish population in pre-war Europe, as many as 90 per cent did not survive the Second World War.

"What amounts to the largest theft in history has not been adequately dealt with," the World Jewish Restitution Organization said in a statement.

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The property includes both pre-war Jewish private property, now currently in the hands of the state and private individuals, and Jewish religious and communal buildings such as synagogues and social organisations that were never returned to the local Jewish community.

Over six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and Nazi collaborators in the deadliest genocide in history.

Gideon Taylor, Chair of Operations at the World Jewish Restitution Organisation, welcomed the report, saying: “This report shines a light on the failure of some countries to address the past and to return that which was taken.