The Humanitarian Fund for the Victims of the Holocaust was created by the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) as a result of the "Meili Affair". The fund enabled the Swiss financial industry to participate in the process of paying reparations to the victims of Nazi looting during World War II that was abetted by Swiss banks and the failure of Swiss life insurance companies to honor the policies of Holocaust victims. The fund is administered by the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims.
Christoph Meili was a Swiss whistleblower, later granted political asylum in the United States, who was a guard at the Swiss bank Union Bank of Switzerland in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1997. He discovered that officials at UBS were destroying documents about orphaned assets, believed to be credit balances of deceased Jewish clients, victims of the Holocaust, whose heirs' whereabouts were unknown, as well as books from the German Reichsbank. [1] They listed stock accounts for companies in business during the Holocaust, including BASF, Degussa, and Degesch. [2] They listed real-estate records for Berlin property that had been seized by the Nazis, placed in Swiss accounts, and then claimed to be owned by UBS. [3] Destruction of such documents is against Swiss laws. [4] [5] The "saved" documents reportedly predate the Nazi period, dating from 1897 to 1927. [6]
On 8 January 1997, [7] he took some bank files home. After a telephone conversation, he handed them over to a local Jewish organization, which brought the documents to the police, and eventually to the press, which published the document destruction on 14 January 1997. The Zürich authorities opened a judicial investigation against Meili [8] for suspected violations of the Swiss laws on banking secrecy, [9] which is a prosecutable offense ex officio in Switzerland. [10] After Meili and his family reported receiving death threats they fled to the United States and were granted political asylum via private bill. [11] [12] [13] [14]
On 13 January 1998, Ed Fagan filed suit against UBS on behalf of the Jewish victims, in the amount of US$2.56 million. On 13 August 1998, a settlement was reached between the Swiss banks and the Jewish plaintiffs totalizing US$1.25 billion. [15] [16] [17]
Meili's revelations turned the Swiss banks into international pariahs, both by exposing their morally dubious behavior in hiding Jewish assets purloined by the Nazis and those deposited by Jew fleeing Nazi genocide, and then their attempt to cover up their culpability by destroying documents. [18] Credit Suisse Chairman Rainer Gut suggested the formation of the Fund to the SBA. [19] The Meili affair also influenced the holding of the London Conference on Nazi Gold (1997). [20]
The Humanitarian Fund for the Victims of the Holocaust [21] is overseen by the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC), [22] which was established in 1998. The organization and the fund were established as per settlement agreements with insurance companies and the German Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future". The Fund finances humanitarian projects related to the Holocaust in two areas: paying out "humanitarian" claims, and funding social welfare and education programs.
Humanitarian claims were evaluated and paid on two bases: those based on anecdotal evidence from Holocaust-era insurance policies, for which there is a lack of supporting documentation; and those for which successor insurance companies no longer exist. In the first category, token payments of US$1,000 were made on a per-claimant basis, symbolizing the fact that many claims cannot be substantiated. The ICHEIC offered 31,284 payments totaling US$31.28 million.
The second category humanitarian claims process covered insurance companies that were either nationalized or liquidated after World War II, for which no present-day successor company exists. Awards were based on the documentation submitted by claimants or discovered by ICHEIC through archival research. The ICHEIC made 2,874 category two offers totaling US$30.54 million.
Payouts were also made on a humanitarian basis for special cases, including top-up payments to raise the total policy payout on a policy to a minimum threshold set by ICHEIC, and also payouts to policies previously paid into blocked accounts.
In addition, funds from restitution programs were used to finance social welfare programs for needy Nazi victims, as well as finance projects for Holocaust remembrance and education and the strengthening of Jewish identity through cultural programs.
The ICHEIC in 2003 committed US$132 million received from the German "Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future" Foundation to fund social welfare benefits for needy victims of the Nazis. The funds were fully disbursed by 2010.
The organization also created the ICHEIC Service Corps in 2003 to encourage university students to meet with local Holocaust survivors. The program was run by Hillel in New York, New York, and the University of Miami in Miami, Florida, and began operations in the fall semester of 2004. It ran through the 2009/10 academic year and was financed with $1.8 million.
The ICHEIC also funded the Initiative to Bring Jewish Cultural Literacy to Youth in the Former Soviet Union, which was developed and administered by the Jewish Agency for Israel. The program sought to promote Jewish identify in the FSU, expand understanding of the Holocaust, and fight antisemitism.
The ICHEIC also launched a Program for Holocaust Education in Europe, which was developed and implemented by Yad Vashem. The program seeks to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and teach its lessons to new generations of Europeans, as well as combat antisemitism. Scheduled to last through 2020, the ICHEIC committed over US$12 million in funds to the program.
In 2005, the ICHEIC also provided a one-time grant of US$500,000 to the March of the Living that sponsors an annual symbolic march in Poland from Auschwitz to Birkenau to honor those murdered in the Holocaust. The program seeks to teach Jewish youth about Nazi crimes in order to ensure that genocide does not occur again.
Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) was a Swiss investment bank and financial services company located in Switzerland. The bank, which at the time was the second largest bank in Switzerland, merged with Swiss Bank Corporation in 1998 to become UBS. This merger formed what was then the largest bank in Europe and the second largest bank in the world.
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) is an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations, founded in Geneva, Switzerland in August 1936. According to its mission statement, the World Jewish Congress's main purpose is to act as "the diplomatic arm of the Jewish people". Membership in the WJC is open to all representative Jewish groups or communities, irrespective of the social, political or economic ideology of the community's host country. The World Jewish Congress headquarters are in New York City, and the organization maintains international offices in Brussels, Belgium; Jerusalem; Paris, France; Moscow, Russia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Geneva, Switzerland. The WJC has special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
Stuart Elliott Eizenstat is an American diplomat and attorney. He served as the United States Ambassador to the European Union from 1993 to 1996 and as the United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001. For many years, and currently he has served as a partner and Senior Counsel at the Washington, D.C.–based law firm Covington & Burling and as a senior strategist at APCO Worldwide.
Edward Davis (Ed) Fagan is a former American reparations lawyer who was disbarred for his conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.
The Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany was signed on September 10, 1952, and entered in force on March 27, 1953. According to the Agreement, West Germany was to pay Israel for the costs of "resettling so great a number of uprooted and destitute Jewish refugees" after the war, and to compensate individual Jews, via the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, for losses in Jewish livelihood and property resulting from Nazi persecution.
Michel Christopher "Christoph" Meili is a Swiss-American whistleblower and former security professional. In 1997, Meili illegally disclosed to third parties that Swiss bank Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) was destroying documentation of Holocaust-era assets. After a federal arrest warrant, a set of fines, and death threats were issued to him, Meili fled Switzerland to the United States by right of asylum in late 1997, returning to his home country in 2009.
Much of the focus of the discussion about Nazi gold concerns how much of it Nazi Germany transferred to overseas banks during World War II. The Nazis looted the assets of their victims to accumulate wealth. In 1998, a Swiss commission estimated that the Swiss National Bank held $440 million of Nazi gold, over half of which is believed to have been looted.
Nazi plunder was organized stealing of art and other items which occurred as a result of the organized looting of European countries during the time of the Nazi Party in Germany.
The Bergier commission in Bern was formed by the Swiss government on 12 December 1996 in the wake of the then ongoing World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks accused of withholding valuables belonging to Holocaust victims. It is also known as the ICE or UEK.
The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference, represents the world's Jews in negotiating for compensation and restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs. According to Section 2(1)(3) of the Property Law of Germany, the Claims Conference is a legal successor with respect to the claims not filed on time by Jewish persons. This fact was reasserted in decisions of some lawsuits which attempted to redefine the Claims Conference as a "trustee" of these assets. These lawsuits were dismissed. The Claims Conference administers compensation funds, recovers unclaimed Jewish property, and allocates funds to institutions that provide social welfare services to Holocaust survivors and preserve the memory and lessons of the Holocaust. Julius Berman has led the organization as chairman of the board, and currently president, as of 2020.
The Arolsen Archives – International Center on Nazi Persecution formerly the International Tracing Service (ITS), in German Internationaler Suchdienst, in French Service International de Recherches in Bad Arolsen, Germany, is an internationally governed centre for documentation, information and research on Nazi persecution, forced labour and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and its occupied regions. The archive contains about 30 million documents from concentration camps, details of forced labour, and files on displaced persons. ITS preserves the original documents and clarifies the fate of those persecuted by the Nazis. The archives have been accessible to researchers since 2007. In May 2019 the Center uploaded around 13 million documents and made it available online to the public. The archives are currently being digitised and transcribed through the crowdsourcing platform Zooniverse. As of September 2022, approximately 46% of the archives have been transcribed.
The World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks was launched in 1995 to retrieve deposits made into the three largest Swiss banks by victims of Nazi persecution during and prior to World War II. WJC negotiations were initiated with the Government of Switzerland and Swiss banks, and later expanded to cover Swiss insurance companies, over burdensome proof-of-ownership requirements for accounts and insurance policies. Strong support from both federal and state United States politicians and officials, threats of sanctions against the three Swiss banks, as well as leaked documents from a bank guard pressured a settlement of the suit in 1998 in a U.S. court for multiple classes of people affected by government and banking practices. The Swiss government itself was not a signatory to the deal. As of early 2020, US$1.29 billion has been disbursed to approximately 458,400 claimants.
The International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC) was established by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in August 1998 to identify, settle, and pay individual Holocaust era insurance claims at no cost to claimants.
Randolph Marshall Bell is a former Ambassador of the United States.
The Holocaust Era Asset Restitution Taskforce or Project HEART (2011-2014) was a Holocaust restitution project that was created by a decision of the Israeli Government to locate Holocaust victims and their heirs and the property that was taken from them during the Holocaust and to assist in obtaining restitution for that property. Restitution would have been sought using databases containing the data submitted by Holocaust victims and their heirs and information about the property that was taken from them. Those who were interested in participating were directed to fill out a questionnaire to determine their eligibility and may also have accessed a website and call center for assistance. Questionnaires had been collected and processed by an administrator and then forwarded to the Israeli Government, which had planned to negotiate with the relevant Governments, companies and others who hold Holocaust assets. This project used innovations, such as the Internet, not used in previous restitution attempts and marked the most serious attempt at obtaining restitution for aged Holocaust victims and their heirs. By April 2014 the project lost 95% of its funding, is accepting no requests, and it has eventually been absorbed into the Israeli Ministry of Senior Citizens, from which the funding into the project were coming.
Thomas Gustav Borer is a Swiss management consultant, lobbyist and former diplomat. From 1996 to 1999 he headed the Switzerland – Second World War Task Force. He then was Switzerland's ambassador to Germany until 2002.
The London Conference on Nazi Gold was an international conference held in London in December 1997. Representatives of 41 nations participated in the Conference, including France, the United Kingdom, the United States, the three countries from the World War II Allies that fought Nazi Germany and the Axis powers that oversaw the post-War disposition of Nazi gold.
The Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, formally the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art and sometimes referred to as the Washington Declaration, is a statement concerning the restitution of art confiscated by the Nazi regime in Germany before and during World War II. It was released in connection with the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, held in Washington, D.C., United States, on 3 December 1998.
The Gerling-Konzern, also known as the Gerling Group, was an internationally operating Cologne-based multi-line insurance company that was taken over in April 2006 by the Hanover-based Talanx Group, brand name HDI Haftpflichtverband der Deutschen Industrie, Germany's third largest insurance group. The group was fully integrated into HDI.