In his words, once the data is collected, the 3 million litas (EUR 870,000) available to the fund will be distributed among them.
"Deciding on the size of compensations is impossible until we have the statistics," Levinas told BNS on Thursday after the fund's first board meeting.
"We have the preliminary and approximate numbers – the figures range between 1,000 and 2,000. I believe we will find out rather soon, as we're not the only organization that pays compensations to the victims. If we have access to the databases of, for example, Claims Conference organization, we will have the numbers rather soon," he said.
In Levinas' words, data collection could take up to six months, and the fund is authorized by law to pay out the compensations by the end of 2013.
The director of the fund noted that applicants would have to prove the damages they incurred.
"There are documents they will have to fill out – every applicant will have to prove he was indeed a victim, and once the documents are in place, the money will be transferred to their personal bank accounts. Everything has to be validated by documents, so that every checker could make sure this is transparent, in line with the criteria and the law," he said.
"Applications are accepted from everyone who suffered from the totalitarian regime after the annexation of Klaipėda and Jews were announced outlaws, as well as those who were deported to Siberia in 1940 and who survived the Nazi occupation. Applications are accepted from absolutely all people of Jewish origin who lived in Lithuania at the time and are now scattered across the globe," Levinas added.
He also stated: "We cannot call this a compensation, it is indeed a sign of attention and listing the people as victims, as the money they will get is symbolic – if we have 2,000 applicants, they will get approximately 1,500 litas each."
Pursuant to the Law on Good Will Compensation for the Real Estate of Jewish Religious Communities adopted by Lithuania's parliament last year, 128 million litas will have to be transferred to the fund over a decade. Some 3 million litas are allocated for the purpose in this year's budget.
More than 90 percent of Lithuania's pre-war Jewish community of about 200,000 were annihilated by Nazis and their local collaborators during World War II. Around 5,000 Jewish people live in Lithuania, according to the Jewish community.
