New York, Tuesday, June 29, 2004 \  Jehuda
Gottdiener, 81, appealed for a share of the
Swiss banks settlement on behalf of U.S. Holocaust
survivors.
Agreement in
Swiss bank case could mean more for
survivors By Joe Berkofsky  NEW
YORK, June 29 (JTA) -- Swiss banks
and the U.S. judge overseeing a $1.25 billion
settlement of Holocaust-era claims have reached an
agreement that may yield hundreds of millions of
dollars in additional assets for survivors and
their heirs.
Reached June 10 between Credit Suisse, UBS AG
and the U.S. District Court of Eastern New York,
the agreement for the first time will publicize
information about thousands of accounts and will
establish a U.S. database to field claims through
the Claims Conference, the principal body dealing
with Holocaust restitution. "This gives us the
information to try to give the money to the right
people," Burt Neuborne, a New York
University law professor and the court-appointed
lead settlement counsel, told JTA. The agreement comes in the wake of a stormy
April hearing before U.S. District Court Judge
Edward Korman that saw survivors and dozens
of groups from the United States, Israel and Europe
vying for the lion's share of some $650 million
remaining from the historic 1998 class-action
settlement with the Swiss banks. Their pleas came after Korman issued several
memorandums earlier this year indicating that after
$593 million had been awarded to survivors or their
heirs, as well as others impacted by Swiss
complicity in Nazi actions -- including Swiss
refugees and slave laborers for Swiss firms -- he
likely would award most of the remaining money to
the poorest survivors, who are believed to live in
the former Soviet Union. Korman also accused the Swiss banks of trying to
"delay justice" and cover up frozen Holocaust-era
assets through strict secrecy laws. If it helps more survivors to recover lost
assets, the June 10 agreement could mean that less
is available for needy survivors who didn't have
Swiss accounts. Of the money awarded so far, nearly $155 million
has gone directly to some 2,000 survivors who had
accounts in Swiss banks, or their heirs. A claims
tribunal screened 33,000 claims for 20,000 names
the Swiss agreed to make public. Court memos indicate that the average award was
$170,000, though assets varied widely in size,
officials said. Under the latest agreement, the banks will
publish information about 5,000 more Swiss accounts
where the names match lists of Holocaust survivors
but lack other corroborating documentation. That will "give people a chance to step forward"
to provide additional evidence linking them to the
accounts, Neuborne said. The banks also finally allowed 13,500 claims
that did not match bank lists, but agreed to rank
them on the basis of relative documentary strength
such as bank books, documents or personal
narratives, Neuborne said. The banks also agreed to try to match those
claims not from a 13,600-name database but from a
much broader file of 4.1 million names, dubbed the
"total account database." Two thousand of the
strongest claims will be reviewed in depth to
determine if they match account data. Jerusalem resident Martin Stern, one of
the original plaintiffs in a separate case that
sparked the Holocaust insurance policy settlement
that produced the International Commission on
Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, or ICHEIC, lauded
the latest Swiss pact. "We have, thank God, broken a barrier," Stern
said of the latest steps. But Stern, a member of the World Zionist
Organization's audit and treasury committees, also
called on the banks and Korman to allow a
"cross-check" between the 500,000 names in the
ICHEIC database and the Swiss database to see if
any account holders surface. "The one thing we want is the full publication
of everything," he said. Gideon Taylor, executive vice president
of the Claims Conference, said the organization was
"honored" to be handling the Swiss accounts case.
Until now, the Claims Conference largely has dealt
with German property restitution. "It's very significant because a lot of money is
at stake and symbolically because everyone feels
that the highest priority is to process these bank
accounts" for survivors and their heirs, he said.
"This is about the story being told and the truth
coming out." Korman handed the final judicial review of the
pact to U.S. District Court Judge Frederick
Block but will retain oversight over the
settlement. Korman could not be reached for
comment. Neuborne, meanwhile, said the pact still must be
ratified by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission
but that he is hopeful the commission will approve
it soon. © Jewish
Telegraphic Agency. 
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