Congress Acts after Survivors Challenge Jewish Leadership on Holocaust Insurance and Bad Arolsen Revelations
Following the series of revelations that began last year, grass roots survivor and second generation groups in Miami and New York mounted a fierce Congressional campaign to supersede international agreements brokered by the State Department to settle insurance claims through the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance claims (ICHEIC), as well as a variety of adverse Supreme Court rulings that have denied survivors’ right to sue to recover or disgorge profits.
The groups have repeatedly pointed to revelations about the unreleased Bad Arolsen records as a rallying point to prove that their insurance claims have been rushed into oblivion. Key Congressional leaders agree and have promised swift action. Thus, the two separate issues—opening up the Bad Arolsen archives and the quest to recover unpaid insurance claims—have become unified into one clause célèbre among survivor groups and key Congressional leaders.
The latest round of efforts began last fall, when elected officials of survivor groups unsuccessfully demanded that ICHEIC and other authorities postpone final disposition of claims pending further research in the ITS files at Bad Arolsen. The groups include such elected bodies as the Miami-based Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA and Queens-based National Association of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors.
In January, Holocaust survivors petitioned federal judge George Daniels to reject a settlement with Generali because ICHEIC had failed to publish the names of all Jewish insured. The petition, which included numerous quotations from the Jewish media about Bad Arolsen’s insurance documentation, decried a rush to judgment. Judge Daniels temporarily delayed a decision, but then finalized the permanent settlement with a limited extension for claims based on Bad Arolsen discoveries.
Having lost in the court, and convinced that established Jewish organizations would not aid them, representative survivor groups lobbied Congress to link the campaign to open Bad Arolsen to the separate campaign to compel disclosure of the names of insureds and recover claims. On March 28, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen did just that, introducing the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2007 to enthusiastic support on both sides of the aisle. The Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2007 seeks to supersede the international agreements brokered by the State Department to settle insurance claims through ICHEIC. Ros-Lehtinen’s bill, reading like a compassionate telling of history, recites the facts of the Holocaust as “an event in which millions of people endured enormous suffering through torture and other violence...one of the most heinous crimes in human history.”
Ros-Lehtinen’s bill goes on to conclude that ICHEIC, due to soon terminate its operation, “did not make sufficient effort to investigate” or compile the names of Holocaust-era insureds or the claims due to survivors. The bill adds that recent media disclosures about the contents of Bad Arolsen have given new justification to such legislation.
The Act would require insurers to disclose at long last comprehensive lists of Jewish policyholders during the Hitler era. The legislation also enables federal lawsuits to recovery monies from insurers, thus overruling ICHEIC’s final word, and a variety of adverse Supreme Court rulings that have denied survivors’ right to sue or gain access to policyholder names. Therefore, the proposed new federal law would trump both the executive and judicial branches on Holocaust-era insurance.
The same day that Ros-Lehtinen’s bill was introduced, Robert Wexler (D-FL), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Europe convened an extraordinary hearing on Bad Arolsen. The purpose was to orchestrate Congressional pressure on the various governments that control the ITS to rush full access to its archives, thus providing the insurance information submerged for decades.
Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee sat stony and grim-faced, some holding back tears, as the hearing unfolded about the secret archives at Bad Arolsen and its impact on Holocaust survivors’ decades-long effort to recover their rightful insurance claims. Survivor witness David Schaecter of Miami, who admitted he was “emotionally overcome,” spoke of impoverished South Florida survivors who cannot afford housing or medications because their rightful insurance payouts were first denied by the insurance companies and then ICHEIC. “I am begging this Congress,” he implored, “to please believe us, we have been wrongly stripped of our pride and property.” Leo Rechter of Queens defiantly pleaded, “Open up Bad Arolsen to expose the Holocaust profiteers.”
As in the past, the survivors drew a sharp line in the sand between their interests and leaders of major Jewish organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, World Jewish Congress, and other communal bodies involved in the estimated $18 billion in insurance restitution. The survivors railed that in some cases prominent Jewish organization leaders, such as prominent personalities of the Anti-Defamation League, were representing Generali against the survivors.
“They are all just waiting for us to die. We are just being used,” protested Rechter.
Rep. Albio Sires (D-NJ) held back tears both in the hearing room and in the corridor. Rep. Wexler steeled his face as he listened and promised, to fast track both legislation and action to open Bad Arolsen. “We will take the next step and then the next step, and then the next step.”
Wexler stated that it was a rare event that might occur “once in four years” to have a subcommittee hearing attended by six committee members. All the legislators were clearly held rapt by the testimony, and most expressed astonishment at what they heard. “This shows the priority we place on this,” Wexler stated. He closed the session with a promise to the survivors that the Congress would act and act quickly.