By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
The elderly and often destitute Holocaust survivor population around the world has benefited little from the decade-long work of an international commission, initiated by former Washington State Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn, that was charged with settling the valid Nazi-era insurance policy claims from thousands of Jews murdered during World War II.
When the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims turned out the lights and closed their doors on March 30, 2007, their report stated that their job had been completed. They said eligible survivors had been compensated, and that the companies were continuing to process valid claims from Jews who filed before the December 23, 2003 deadline.
Now, two insurance giants, Allianz of Germany, and Generali of Italy, (reportedly two of the largest holders of Jewish Nazi-era insurance policies), are waiting and watching as President Bush and ICHEIC Chairman and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger take their leave from the process, during which ICHEIC retrieved just 3 percent of the estimated, 2006-adjusted, $17 billion of unpaid insurance claims owed to Jewish survivors and their heirs.
As other German insurance companies like AXA, Winterthur, Zurich and their affiliates also wait and watch, Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Robert Wexler (D-FL) have stepped into the breach by co-sponsoring The Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2007, H.R. 1746, introduced in March of this year. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) is a cosponsor of this bill.
The bill requires insurance companies who hold paid and covered Holocaust-era insurance policies and who conduct business in the U.S. to open their records and disclose the names of policyholders. The legislation also allows claimants to pursue these assets in federal court.
Experts estimate the value of remaining unpaid annuities, dowry insurance policies, and endowments stolen from European Jews to be close to $200 billion, according to the bill.
H.R. 1746 is currently in the House and a Senate version is pending.
“That [ICHEIC] process has officially ended under a cloud, but the pursuit of justice is still active and urgent,” wrote Fred Taucher, chair of the Survivors of the Holocaust Asset Recovery Project in Washington State, in a letter to Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler on behalf of SHARP.
“We are now seeking your support for the next necessary step,” added Taucher, “[for] federal legislation to insure that all claimants of unpaid insurance policies have a fair chance to pursue those claims under the law.”
However, H.R. 1746 is not without its detractors. The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors opposes this bill, and, in 2003, the Supreme Court overturned a 2003 California law that would have punished insurers for not publishing Holocaust-era insurance claim information. The California Department of Insurance also opposes this bill.
Kreidler told SHARP he would not support the proposed bill in its current form because the suggested federal remedy would be too burdensome on the court system.
“We are monitoring the progress of HR 1746,” wrote Kreidler in a frank and definitive response to Taucher and SHARP in a letter dated Sept. 24, 2007. “The bill does not provide a process for claimants to pursue payments other than through the complicated and expensive federal court system, and I suspect that it will be subject to legal challenges on constitutional grounds.”
Kreidler was unavailable for further comment but told the JTNews via a staff member that he would reconsider his position if the bill were modified.
“It raises concerns and it’s stunning,” said Danny Kadden, a survivor advocate and a child of survivors. Kadden closely observed the ICHEIC process and worked with former Insurance Commissioners Senn and Kreidler in the Seattle OIC office. “What’s changed? Why was he supporting these claims a few years ago? We had a record of supporting these issues in the courts. I think he needs to say what he would endorse.”
According to ICHEIC, the Austrian General Settlement Fund continues to process previously filed claims and some companies have agreed to accept post-deadline Holocaust-era claims directly from survivors, but they still require ICHEIC standards of proof and valuation guidelines.
Allianz of America Life Insurance Company has always maintained that they have been determined to see that justice is done.
“The majority of cases were included in post-war compensation programs and treaties among the nations involved in the war,” said Herbert Hansmeyer, a then-member of the Allianz AG Board of Management at the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets in 1998, when ICHEIC began its work. “It was our understanding that these programs — initiated after World War II by the Allied governments and continued to this day by the Federal Republic of Germany, had, in fact, settled all claims.”
However, in 1999, after Jewish groups in the U.S filed a class-action lawsuit and the U.S. government applied pressure, Germany created a $5.1 billion slave and forced labor victim fund, with one-fifth of the money dedicated to insurance claims and other property claims.
But political squabbling and disagreement over how to distribute this money has, once again, left survivors waiting for a just resolution of their claims.
In 2003, four years after the creation of the fund, the U.S. issued “Statement of Interest” letters to Germany and Austria, maintaining that the policy of the administration would be that all claims should be pursued through the victim foundation and not the courts.
These “Letters of Interest” would settle all claims in a lump sum, closing out the claims process and leaving thousands of individual cases unnamed and lost forever.
This, according to Commissioner Kreidler, is another reason he can’t endorse H.R. 1746. He is concerned about “a retroactive provision that could potentially invalidate prior settlement agreements.”
“Survivors and their heirs who are backing this legislation categorically reject the notion that assurances made by the U.S. Government to the German and Austrian governments cancel out, for all time, the rights of survivors and other bona fide claimants,” said Kadden.
Today, tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors live in poverty throughout the world, including in the U.S., according to an Association of Jewish Family and Children’s Agencies 2002 poll.
The National Jewish Population Study from 2000 to 2001 puts the number of American survivors living below the poverty level at about 30,000, though that number decreases as survivors pass away.
Data from the 2003 and 2004 surveys of Holocaust survivors done by the Washington State Holocaust Survivors Assistance Office show that approximately 180-200 survivors and three times as many children of survivors live in Washington State, most of them in the Greater Seattle area.
“Survivors have always gotten the short shrift,” said Kadden, who faults the current administration and the international Jewish leadership involved in the process for not pursuing a better outcome. “They value commercial relations with Germany more then they value justice for survivors. We are the fourth-largest claimant population in the country. The solution for heirs who have valid claims is through this proposed legislation.”
Editor’s note: This article has been corrected to note that Rep. Jay Inslee was not a signatory of the letter to Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, but was a cosponsor of H.R. 1746.