Friday April 6, 2007

Survivors, legislators renew push to recover Nazi-era insurance claims

by edwin black
jta

Having lost in court — and convinced that established Jewish organizations would not aid them — survivor groups have increasingly lobbied Congress to link the campaign to open Nazi-era archives to the separate campaign to recover insurance claims and compel disclosure of the names of those insured.

Their efforts are paying off.

On Wednesday, March 28, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) introduced the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2007 to enthusiastic support on both sides of the aisle.

The act seeks to supersede international agreements brokered by the State Department to settle insurance claims through the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance. The bill concludes that ICHEIC, which is due to terminate operations soon, “did not make sufficient effort to investigate” or compile the names of Holocaust-era insureds or the claims due to survivors. Recent media disclosures about the contents of archives at Bad Arolsen, Germany, have given new justification to such legislation, according to the bill.

Also on March 28, Rep. Robert (D-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Europe, convened an extraordinary hearing on Bad Arolsen. Members of the Foreign Affairs Committee sat stony and grim-faced, some holding back tears, as the hearing unfolded about the archives and their impact on survivors’ decades-long effort to recover insurance claims.

Survivor David Schaecter of Miami, who admitted he was “emotionally overcome,” spoke of impoverished survivors in South Florida who cannot afford housing or medicine because their insurance payouts were first denied by the insurance companies and then by ICHEIC.

“I am begging this Congress,” Schaecter implored, “to please believe us. We have been wrongly stripped of our pride and property.”

Leo Rechter of Queens pleaded, “Open up Bad Arolsen to expose the Holocaust profiteers.”

Rep. Albio Sires (D-N.J.) held back tears both in the hearing room and in the corridor. Wexler promised to fast-track legislation and action to open Bad Arolsen.

“We will take the next step and then the next step, and then the next step,” Wexler said.

The hearing’s purpose was to orchestrate congressional pressure on the 11 governments — the United States, France, England, Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Israel, Italy and Germany — that control the ITS to rush full access to its archives, providing the insurance information that has been submerged for decades.

Grassroots survivor and second-generation groups in Miami and New York mounted their campaign following a series of revelations that began last year in the Jewish media, including j.

The groups have used revelations about the unreleased Bad Arolsen records as a rallying point to prove that their insurance claims have been pushed into oblivion.

In January, Holocaust survivors petitioned federal Judge George Daniels to reject a settlement with insurer Generali, because the ICHEIC had failed to publish the names of all Jews whom the company insured before World War II. Daniels ultimately finalized the permanent settlement with a limited extension for claims based on discoveries that might emerge from the Bad Arolsen archive.

Ros-Lehtinen’s bill would require insurers to disclose comprehensive lists of Jewish policyholders from the Nazi era, and would enable federal lawsuits to recover money from insurers — thus overruling ICHEIC’s final word and a variety of Supreme Court rulings that have denied survivors’ rights to sue or gain access to policyholder names.

In response, a representative for ICHEIC said the commission had accomplished its mission of identifying and settling unpaid Holocaust-era life insurance claims by processing more than 90,000 claims and distributing more than $306 million to more than 48,000 claimants.

Edwin Black is the author of “IBM and the Holocaust” and is responsible for a series of investigations revealing the contents of the ITS archives at Bad Arolsen (http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/BadArolsenArticles.php).