Kurt May

Kurt May (1896–1992) was director of the United Restitution Organization, which assisted victims of Nazism, from its inception in 1948 to his retirement at age 91, in 1988.

For more than forty years he played a leading role in efforts to obtain compensation for Jews and Roma (Gypsies) who had been persecuted, maltreated and robbed of their possessions by the Nazis. He presided over a worldwide organization with branches in 19 countries and a staff of more than 1000. In the course of its existence, the URO aided over 500,000 people.

He also virtually singlehandedly convinced the postwar German government to admit that the Nazis had persecuted Roma on grounds of race and ethnicity. The decision was made in a 1956 German court ruling after a 10-year legal battle, and opened up the possibility of Roma claiming compensation for Nazi crimes.

Benjamin Ferencz, the Chief Prosecutor for the United States Army at the postwar Nuremberg war crimes trials, wrote in his book ''"Less than Slaves'' (1979) that Kurt May, with whom Ferencz had worked on behalf of Holocaust victims, had also been one of the driving forces in efforts to obtain compensation for former Jewish slave laborers who had been forced to work under horrendous and often fatal conditions at I.G. Farben and other companies which collaborated closely with the Nazi SS.

I.G. Farben was the privately-owned German chemicals conglomerate allied with the Nazis that manufactured the Zyklon B gas used to commit genocide against millions of European Jews in the Holocaust. Industrialists from the company were tried at the IG Farben trial. Provided by Wikipedia