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Republican City Council Candidate Dan Halloran reminded the community of his current role as legal counsel. Halloran, who is seeking to replace Tony Avella in the 19th District, is fighting the never-streamlined, uphill battle to recover property stolen by the Nazis in World War II.

Glenn Berwin's great uncle was arrested and shipped to a concentration camp in 1943. His property - two restaurants and a women's store in Berlin - were seized, and his veteran's pension for service in World War I was frozen. The contemporary value of those assets is likely between $25,000 and $125,000. Berwin has been offered settlements between $2,000 and $5,000 per claim.

A retired supermarket employee living in Whitestone, Berwin said he has known Halloran since the early 1990s, when they would both hang out at bars on Bell Boulevard.

"It seemed hopeless," Berwin said. "I thought the odds [of recovery] were insurmountable. You have to be clever to outsmart people who want to hold onto money they stole." Berwin's father was in Dachau for two months in 1939 before he was permitted to immigrate to the United States. The only survivor on his paternal side, Berwin's father, was on the last boat leaving Holland. More than 20 members of his family were killed. "Jews in Munich were rounded up after an attempt on Hitler's life," Berwin said. "Dozens of Jews sat in jail, all sharing a toilet."

Halloran said he doesn't usually take on this kind of litigation, but he was compelled by Berwin's family story.

"I wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer," Halloran said, who is a partner in the firm Palmieri and Castiglione in Mineola. "Glenn has a right to this property, the Nazis never did. I'm a fighter, and whenever I see injustice, I'll fight for what's right."

Halloran distinguishes between reparation for relatives of Holocaust survivors, and those for African-Americans seeking slavery-era reparations, believing the two issues to be "unique and legally distinguishable, as most Holocaust survivors can be specifically identified and their damages quantified in a meaningful way."

Halloran's campaign said thanks to his work as an attorney, other Holocaust victims and their descendants may be able to acquire stolen property, by capitalizing on a federal court decision that accessed the record of WW I pensions. Halloran also thought to look at military records, rather than just pension documents.

"If we find specific names and time periods, we can get their pension records," Halloran said. "Courts have been throwing these cases out. I hope this will open the door for others with these kinds of claims."

Halloran has been contending with the Claims Resolution Tribunal in Switzerland for three years. If an unfavorable decision surfaces from the Tribunal, he we will move to Federal District Court, which is supervising the program.

"Jewish people should know that they are entitled to pursue their legacy," said Berwin. "The legacy of my people should be with my family and not with the sons of people who committed crimes against them."

Reach Reporter Lori Gross at lgross@queenstribune.com, or (718) 357-7400, Ext. 124.