By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
It took until the last minute, but Washington’s state legislature went on record to ask for more help for the estimated 200 Holocaust survivors living in the state.
House Joint Memorial 4028, sponsored by Rep. Shay Schual-Berke of Des Moines (D-33), was approved by the state Senate on the last day of the legislative session, after being held up in committee for several weeks and undergoing several changes in its text. An identical resolution had also been introduced by Seattle Sen. Adam Kline (D-37). That version was never reported out to the Senate floor.
“Shual-Berke’s version came sailing through the House without any changes at all. The end result was a better version than mine,” Kline said. He said that the full Senate did not have a chance to act on either version of the bill until the last minute.
“The federal judge in New York had a deadline” for public input, Kline said. The bill passed “on Thursday and the judge’s deadline was Friday, so we faxed it over there.”
He credited a number of King County senators from the other side of the aisle for assisting in making sure the memorial legislation was voted on before adjournment. Kline specifically mentioned Jim Horn (R-41), Luke Esser (R-48) and Bill Finkbeiner (R-45), “all of whom were interested in doing right by the Jewish community,” Kline said, “and to their credit, they did.”
The message was sent to former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, chair of the International Commission of Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, and to federal court Judge Edward Korman, who oversaw a suit on behalf of the families of Holocaust victims seeking to collect money held by Swiss banks after World War II.
“It simply expresses the sentiment of the legislature. That’s all a memorial does,” said Kline. “This simply asked that the money be dispersed to survivors and claimants and be done so promptly”
In 2002, the state legislature made the insurance claims viable for eligible people living in this state and extending the statute of limitations for another 10 years, he said.
In August 1998, several large European insurance conglomerates, representatives from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, international Jewish and survivor organizations, and the State of Israel signed a memorandum of understanding forming ICHEIC. The commission is in charge of distributing money owed to families of Holocaust victims who bought insurance in the shadow of World War II.
After the War, many of these claims were denied because the families could not supply death certificates or other documents. The commission’s stated purpose was to provide a way for thousands of Holocaust survivors and their heirs to submit claims for the first time and to address the gaps in the post-War compensation programs of the 1950s and ‘60s.
The deadline for filing claims through ICHEIC passed at the end of 2003.
A separate fund was set up by ICHEIC, the Federal Republic of Germany and the other parties to assist needy Holocaust survivors with $165 million, set aside from the total claims amount. To date the ICHEIC Humanitarian Fund has distributed $2.4 million for the benefit of survivors in the United States, including $12,000 for Washington survivors.
The Swiss bank case has been going on for a number of years in the U.S. District Court of Eastern New York. In 1998, a landmark deal under which survivors or the heirs of looted Swiss bank deposits were to receive $800 million in restitution out of a total settlement of $1.25 billion. Korman ruled several years ago that the poorest Jewish Holocaust survivors should receive 75 percent of the remaining money after the account holders were paid. He is presently considering reallocating up to $600 million in unclaimed settlement funds to humanitarian purposes benefiting needy Holocaust survivors around the world.
Brandeis University conducted a $50,000 study comparing the latest “hardship and need” among survivors in the former Soviet Union, Israel and the United States on behalf of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The report “was not designed to make the policy decision but simply to lay out the facts about the situation of victims in different countries and the resources they have available to them,” said Brandeis’ Center for the Study of Modern Jewish History’s director, Leonard Saxe.
The Brandeis report estimates numbers of the survivors worldwide range from 687,900 to 1.92 million—39 to 47 percent live in Israel; between 13 and 23 percent live in the former Soviet Union; 15 to 17 percent live in the United States and between 19 and 26 percent live elsewhere, mostly across Europe. The poorest are in the former Soviet Union, where some live on as little as $18 a month in pensions. Even the poor survivors in Israel and the United States receive more in pensions or Social Security and can access better and cheaper medical care, the report said.
A recent survey conducted jointly by the Jewish Family Service of Seattle and the Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner’s Holocaust Survivors Assistance Office estimated the average age of the approximately 200 survivors in this state to be 79 years old. It predicted that increasing numbers of aging survivors will require extensive home care and other social services in the near future.
“These individuals are the victims, those that are still alive. They need the help. That’s where I believe the money ought to go—all of it,” said Kline.
Daniel Kadden has been active in Holocaust survivors’ issues in this state for some time. He was one of the witnesses to testify before the House and Senate committees when they held hearings on the memorial legislation.
“This is just a statement of a community in the United States which has shown a great deal of care for its survivors—Washington State—saying we are watching this, that we care about this, we care primarily that it be done quickly,” said Kadden, “and for the judge to take into account that this is a public interest of our state, not just a small sector of our community, which is elderly survivors and their families and it’s not just the Jewish community.
“All of us are trying to address the needs now and also anticipate, as sure as the sun is going to come up, there is this aging population who’s needs will become more serious and more complex,” he added “We have to do everything we can for them and not leave them in a lurch.”