The Special Commission for the Investigation of the seizure and return of Jewish property in Luxembourg during the war years 1940-1945 submitted its final report to Government on 19 June 2009. The government has decided to publish this report.

The 82-page report covers assets seized by the Nazis in occupied countries. In certain communist regimes in central and eastern Europe, the governments refused to return the so-called spoils of war, leading to the victims of the Nazi regime also being victims of Communist regimes.

In 1997, following an international conference in London on gold stolen by the Nazis, a Nazi Persecution Relief Fund was established. Luxembourg contributed 500,000 USD to support this fund and, like many other countries, set up their own commission. A series of international conferences: London in December 1997 (Nazi Gold), Washington in December 1998 (Holocaust era assets), Stockholm in January 2000 (Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust: A conference on Education, Remembrance and Research) and Vilnius in October 2000 (International Forum on Holocaust Era Looted Cultural Assets) concluded that each country should carry out their own historical research investigation to clarify issues relating to the deprivation and compensation or restitution of property of victims of anti-Jewish persecution.

The Luxembourg Government asked that all requests from individuals be considered on a case-by-case basis. A parliamentary bill was proposed on January 2001 to establish such a commission. It was decided not to proceed by way of legislative procedure, and was instead passed on 15 November that year by the government, not by parliament. Its mission was defined and a decree of the Prime Minister appointed members of the Commission in December and a study commenced in February 2002.

The number of Jews living in Luxembourg in 1940 is unknown, but the figure from 1935 was 3,144, representing 1.1% of the population, of which around 3/4 were non-Luxembourgish. It is thought that just over 3,900 Jews lived in Luxembourg by 1940. The report estimated that 3,049 Jews left Luxembourg between 10 May 1940 and the eve of the first convoy of deportation to Eastern Europe, 15 October 1941. During the same period, 42 Jews died in Luxembourg.

816 Jews, mostly sick and elderly, still lived in Luxembourg: of these, only 139 people were not deported to the camps in Eastern Europe. The total number of deportees from Luxembourg amounted to 677 of which the vast majority did not survive deportation. 624 died during the war and only 53 survived various camps, ghettos and prisons (a death ratio of 92.2%).

Of those who emigrated, 463 refugees arrived in the United States, 124 in Switzerland and 102 in Cuba. 1,374 Jews remained in France and 217 in Belgium, with at least 599 and 78 surviving respectively.

The figures established by the study differ significantly from those published in the Yad Vashem encyclopedia which claimed 1,200 died and 2,500 survived (the Luxembourg study arrived at 1,945 deaths and 1,555 surviving).

At the time of liberation, the Jewish community in Luxembourg had virtually ceased to exist with 70 Jews registered as at September 1944.

The report's conclusion was that 30 million RM of assets were confiscated by the Nazis, in terms of bank accounts, real estate and other fixed assets, and used to finance the war. As the Luxembourg government in exile declared null and void all land transactions carried out under duress, seized properties were returned to their rightful owners after the war, where possible. Bank accounts were also unfrozen, but the investigation discovered around 200 dormant accounts which had remained unclaimed since 1946. However, the average amount per account is only 125 euros, including interest.

The report states that there is no evidence of discrimination in compensation and therefore there is no need to reopen compensation files to repair any injustice.