United Restitution Organization

The United Restitution Organization (URO) was established in 1948 as a legal aid service to assist victims of Nazi persecution living outside Germany in making restitution and indemnification claims against Germany and Austria. The URO has served over 250,000 clients.^[1] It helped Jews, Roma, and other victims of Nazi crimes. At its most expansive, the URO maintained 29 offices in 15 countries around the world.^[2] British barrister Norman Bentwich was the chairman of the URO board from 1948 until his death in 1971, and Kurt May, a German-born lawyer who had fled the Nazis in 1934 after he defended a leading Social Democrat wrongly accused of being a Communist, served as its director from the early 1950s until 1990.

• Guide to the United Restitution Organization New York Office Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, NY.
• The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum also holds several collections related to the URO. They can be found via the USHMM Collections Search.
• United Restitution Organization miscellaneous records at the Hoover Institution Archives.