Judge Edward Korman of Brooklyn is due to give his final
decision on the disposition of hundreds of millions of
dollars won from Swiss banks over six years ago.
At issue is the fate of up to $600 million in residual funds
that may be available for distribution after Holocaust
survivors whose Swiss bank accounts were frozen during World
War II are identified. So far, the court has paid out $593m.
from the $1.25 billion 1998 settlement to bank account
holders, slave laborers who toiled for firms with Swiss
accounts, refugees who were turned away from the Swiss border
and needy Nazi victims. Some 75 percent of the humanitarian
aid set aside by the fund currently goes to survivors in the
FSU, where it is distributed by the Joint Distribution
Committee.
In a report released last week, Special Master Judah Gribetz,
who was appointed by Judge Korman of New York's eastern
district to oversee the settlement distribution, recommended
that poor survivors living in central and eastern Europe and
the FSU be the beneficiaries of the "first tranche" of
residual funds. Emergency assistance programs, he wrote,
should also be made immediately available to survivors
worldwide and, if funds remain, medical and home-case
services for survivors across the globe should be funded.
Remembrance programs, which have been the beneficiaries of up
to 20 percent of funds from other settlements, should not
receive monies as survivor needs remain so "overwhelming,"
Gribetz wrote.
"In sum, assistance that helps keep survivors alive, food,
winter relief and in many cases emergency grants, should take
priority over all other aid programs, even those that add to
survivors comfort and relieve some of the burdens for those
who have difficulty with personal care," Gribetz wrote.
He noted that without humanitarian aid, many of the 135,000
Jewish survivors in the FSU could die of starvation. The
court solicited proposals from groups providing assistance to
survivors, and according to service providers, 17,105
survivors are in need of food aid in Israel, 2,272 in the US
and 121,600 in the FSU. Those in the FSU are 85 percent of
the worldwide total. Also, social safety nets exist in Israel
and the US, while "those who remain in the FSU have no such
safety nets, with the exception of the programs currently
funded by the court," Gribetz wrote.
Gribetz also included an annex showing the distribution of
nearly $54b. in reparations and restitution payments to
Jewish Holocaust victims since 1945. Some 43 percent of all
payments, or $23.6b., have gone to Nazi victims in Israel; 28
percent to the US and 27.8 percent to all other areas
excluding the FSU. FSU survivors, cut off from funds and
programs by the Iron Curtain until almost 1990, have received
only about $444m., or 0.8 percent of the payments.
Israeli officials opposed the recommendations, and the
Knesset Ministerial Committee on the Restoration of Jewish
Property was slated to meet this week to discuss the Swiss
settlement and plan for the April 29 court hearing, the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
According to the co-chair of the World Jewish Restitution
Organization (WJRO), Jewish Agency chairman Sallai Meridor,
Gribetz's recommendations were a slap in the face to
survivors worldwide.
"I believe he [Gribetz] extremely underestimated the needs of
survivors in Israel, in North America, in every country,
basically, except the FSU," Meridor said.
The WJRO proposal used studies on demography and neediness to
propose that 48 percent of remaining Swiss banks funds go to
Israel, 17 percent to the FSU and 15 percent to North
America.
The proposal included a population study by Israeli
demographer Sergio Dellapergola that found that 46.5 percent
of survivors live in Israel, although he defined Middle
Eastern and North African Jews living under the French sphere
of influence during the war as survivors. The proposal also
requested funding for education, remembrance and research
projects, including an appeal by Israel's state archives for
funds to preserve documents from the Eichmann trial.
Declining to give a portion of the funds to remembrance and
research, a stance supported by Korman in an April 2, 2004
opinion, "denies the victims who have not survived the right
to be remembered," Meridor said. "After all, it's their money
that is the residual money in the hands of the court."
The experience of FSU survivors, many of whom survived by
fleeing eastward ahead of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet
Union, has been derided by some of those who survived more
extreme experiences; in fact, Dellapergola's study originally
included a sufferance index that was removed after some
survivors complained.
Asked to comment on Gribetz's recommendations, Noah Flug,
chairman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust
Survivors in Israel, "we see it as taking money from the
survivors to give to poor Jews in Russia and I think it is
not fair. I'm for helping needy Jews, if they need bread and
housing and so on. But I think the rich American Jews should
help the poor Russian Jews."
Representatives from numerous groups, including the WJRO and
Flug's organization, are scheduled to testify at this week's
hearing, and two US-based groups, the Holocaust Survivors'
Foundation and the National Association of Jewish Child
Holocaust Survivors, plan to protest Gribetz's
recommendations at the courthouse.
In the Forward last week the chairman of the American
Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors wrote that those who
perished in the Holocaust would "despise the nasty arguments
over how the money they had placed in Swiss banks for the
safety and protection of their families will now be
distributed."
