As part of the restitution agreement, Mr. Kumar will pay about $20 million from his own assets, while trusts he created for his wife and children will pay the remainder.

He helped obtain hundreds of millions of dollars for victims of Nazism who were not covered by earlier restitution agreements.

The task of tracing and apportioning the gold and other assets was daunting, but American officials tolerated intransigence by other nations and accepted pitiful restitution agreements in the name of cold-war solidarity.

Some judicial systems only recognize monetary restitution agreements.

Mr. Scholz agrees that the national government, which signed the restitution agreement, has provided nothing.

The WJC does not seek any form of commission or gratification payments from Holocaust-era compensation or restitution agreements.

Under Rabbi Miller's leadership, historic compensation and restitution agreements were reached with Germany and Austria acknowledging the suffering of the Jewish people during the darkest period of human history.

The restitution agreement was made after Mr. Halperin pleaded guilty in Manhattan Supreme Court last year to looting the foundation of $370,000 in fraudulent legal fees and purchases for his personal benefit.

In January 1952, when Nahum Goldman of the World Jewish Congress and Konrad Adenauer of West Germany negotiated their restitution agreement, protesters outside the Israeli Parliament denounced compensation as blood money.

It is Barkan's argument that for all their ambiguities, restitution agreements validate victims and perpetrators alike.