The Holocaust Industry (15 page)

now quipped. "It's about more money."
28

Beyond whipping up public hysteria, the Holocaust industry coordinated a two-pronged strategy to

"terrorize" (Bower) the Swiss into submission: class-action lawsuits and an economic boycott. The

first class-action lawsuit was filed in early October 1996 by Edward Pagan and Robert Swift on behalf

of Gizella Weisshaus (her father spoke about monies deposited in Switzerland before his death in

Auschwitz, but the banks rebuffed her postwar inquiries) and «others similarly situated" for $20

billion. A few weeks later the Simon Wiesenthal Center, enlisting attorneys Michael Hausfeld and

Melvyn Weiss, filed a second class-action lawsuit, and in January 1997 the World Council of

Orthodox Jewish Communities initiated yet a third one. All three suits were filed before Judge Edward

Korman, a US District Court judge in Brooklyn, who consolidated them. At least one party to the case,

Toronto-based attorney Sergio Karas, deplored this tactic: "The class-action suits have done nothing

but provoke mass hysteria and Swiss-bashing. They're just perpetuating the myth about Jewish

lawyers who just want money." Paul Volcker opposed the class-action suits on the grounds that they

"will impair our work, potentially to the point of ineffectiveness»—for the Holocaust industry an

irrelevant concern, if not an added incentive.
29

The main weapon used to break Swiss resistance, however, was the economic boycott. "Now the

battle will be much dirtier," Avraham Burg, chair of the Jewish Agency and Israel's point man in the

Swiss banking case, warned in January 1997. "Until now we have held back international Jewish

pressure." Already in January 1996 the WJC had begun plotting the boycott. Bronfman and Singer

contacted New York City Comptroller Alan Hevesi (whose father had been a prominent AJC official)

and New York State Comptroller Carl McCall. Between them, the two comptrollers invest billions of

dollars in pension funds. Hevesi also presided over the US Comptrollers Association, which invested

$30 trillion in pension funds. In late January Singer strategized with Governor George Pataki of New

York as well as with D'Amato and Bronfman at his daughter's wedding. "Look what kind of man I

am," the Rabbi mused, "doing business at my daughter's wedding."
30

In February 1996 Hevesi and McCall wrote the Swiss banks threatening sanctions. In October

Governor Pataki publicly lent his support. During the next several months local and state governments

in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Illinois all tabled resolutions threatening an economic

boycott unless the Swiss banks came clean. In May 1997 the city of Los Angeles, withdrawing

hundreds of millions of dollars in pension funds from a Swiss bank, imposed the first sanctions.

Hevesi quickly followed suit with sanctions in New York. California, Massachusetts, and Illinois

joined in within days.

"I want $3 billion or northward," Bronfman proclaimed in December 1997, «in order to end it all, the

class-action suits, the Volcker process and the rest." Meanwhile, D'Amato and New York State

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banking officials sought to block the newly formed United Bank of Switzerland (a merger of major

Swiss banks) from operating in the United States. «If the Swiss are going to keep digging their heels

in, then I'll have to ask all US shareholders to suspend their dealings with the Swiss,» Bronfman

warned in March 1998. "It's coming to a point where it has to resolve itself or it has to be total war."

In April the Swiss started buckling under the pressure, but still resisted abject surrender. (Through

1997 the Swiss reportedly spent $500 million to fend off the Holocaust industry attacks.) "There's a

virulent cancer throughout the Swiss society," Melvyn Weiss, one of the class-action lawyers,

lamented. "We gave them an opportunity to get rid of it with a massive dose of radiation at a cost that

is very small and they've turned it down." In June the Swiss banks put forth a "final offer» of $600

million. ADL head Abraham Foxman, shocked by
Swiss
arrogance, could barely contain his rage:

"This ultimatum is an insult to the memory of the victims, their survivors and to those in the Jewish

community who in good faith reached to the Swiss to work together to resolve this most difficult

matter."
31

In July 1998, Hevesi and McCall threatened stiff new sanctions.

New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, and California joined in within days. In

mid-August the Swiss finally caved in. In a class-action settlement mediated by Judge Korman, the

Swiss agreed to pay $1.25 billion. "The aim of the additional payment," a Swiss banks press release

read, "is to avert the threat of sanctions as well as long and costly court proceedings."
32

"You have been a true pioneer in this saga," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated

D'Amato. "The result is not only an achievement in material terms but a moral victory and a triumph

of the spirit."
33
Pity he didn't say "the will."

The $1.25 billion settlement with Switzerland covered basically three classes — claimants to dormant

Swiss accounts, refugees denied Swiss asylum, and victims of slave labor which Swiss benefited

from.
34
For all the righteous indignation about the "perfidious Swiss," however, the comparable

American record is, on all these counts, just as bad, if not worse. I will return presently to the matter

of dormant US accounts. Like Switzerland, the US denied entry to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism

before and during World War II. Yet the American government hasn't seen fit to compensate, say,

Jewish refugees aboard the ill-fated ship
St. Louis.
Imagine the reaction if the thousands of Central

American and Haitian refugees who were denied asylum after fleeing US-sponsored death squads

sought compensation here. And, although dwarfed in size and resources by the United States,

Switzerland admitted just as many Jewish refugees as the US (approximately 20,000) during the Nazi

holocaust.
35

The only means to atone for past sins, American politicians lectured Switzerland, was providing

material compensation. Stuart Eizenstat, Undersecretary for Commerce and Clinton's Special Envoy

for Property Restitution, deemed Swiss compensation to Jewry "an important litmus test of this

generation's willingness to face the past and to rectify the wrongs of the past." Although they couldn't

be "held responsible for what took place years ago," D'Amato acknowledged during the same Senate

hearing, the Swiss still had "a duty of accountability and of attempting to do what is right at this point

in time." Publicly endorsing the WJC's compensation demands, President Clinton likewise reflected

that "we must confront and, as best we can, right the terrible injustice of the past." "History does not

have a statute of limitations," chairman James Leach said during the House Banking Committee

hearings, and "the past must never be forgotten." "It should be made clear," bipartisan Congressional

leaders wrote in a letter to the Secretary of State, that the "response on this restitution matter will be

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seen as a test of respect for basic human rights and the rule of law." And in an address to the Swiss

Parliament, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright explained that the economic benefits accruing to

the Swiss from withheld Jewish accounts "were passed along to subsequent generations and that is

why the world now looks to the people of Switzerland, not to assume responsibility for actions taken

by their forebears, but to be generous in doing what can be done at this point to right past wrongs."
36

Noble sentiments all, but nowhere to be heard — unless they are being actively ridiculed — when it

comes to African-American compensation for slavery.
37

It remains unclear how "needy Holocaust survivors" will fare in the final settlement. Gizella

Weisshaus, the first claimant of a dormant Swiss account to sue, has discharged her attorney, Edward

Fagan, bitterly charging that he used her. Still, Fagan's bill to the court totaled $4 million in fees. Total

attorney fee demands run to $15 million, with "many" billing at a rate of $600 per hour. One lawyer is

asking $2,400 for reading Tom Bower's book,
Nazi Gold.
"Jewish groups and survivors," New York's

Jewish Week
reported, "are taking off the gloves as they vie for a share of the Swiss banks' $1.25

billion Holocaust-era settlement." Plaintiffs and survivors maintain that all the money should go

directly to them. Jewish organizations, however, are demanding a piece of the action. Denouncing the

aggrandizement of the Jewish organizations, Greta Beer, a key Congressional witness against the

Swiss banks, beseeched Judge Korman's court that "I don't want to be crushed underfoot like a little

insect." Its solicitude for "needy Holocaust survivors" notwithstanding, the WJC wants nearly half the

Swiss monies earmarked for Jewish organizations and "Holocaust education." The Simon Wiesenthal

Center maintains that if "worthy" Jewish organizations receive monies, "a portion should go to Jewish

educational centers." As they "angle" for a bigger share of the loot, Reform and Orthodox

organizations each claim that the 6 million dead would have preferred their branch of Judaism as

financial beneficiary. Meanwhile, the Holocaust industry forced Switzerland into a settlement because

time was allegedly of the essence: "needy Holocaust survivors are dying every day." Once the Swiss

signed away the money, however, the urgency miraculously passed. More than a year after the

settlement was reached there was still no distribution plan. By the time the money is finally divvied

out all the "needy Holocaust survivors" will probably be dead. In fact, as of December 1999, less than

half of the $200 million "Special Fund for Needy Victims of the Holocaust" established in February

1997 had been distributed to actual victims. After lawyers' fees have been paid, the Swiss monies will

then flow into the coffers of "worthy" Jewish organizations.
38

No settlement can possibly be defended," Burt Neuborne, a New York University law professor and

member of the class-action legal team, wrote in the
New York Times,
"if it allows the Holocaust to

stand as a profit-making enterprise for the Swiss banks." Edgar Bronfman movingly testified before

the House Banking Committee that the Swiss should not "be allowed to make a profit from the ashes

of the Holocaust." On the other hand, Bronfman recently acknowledged that the WJC treasury has

amassed no less than "roughly $7 billion" in compensation monies.
39

The authoritative reports on the Swiss banks have meanwhile been published. One can now judge

whether in fact there was, as Bower claims, a "fifty-year Swiss-Nazi conspiracy to steal billions from

Europe's Jews and Holocaust survivors."

In July 1998 the Independent (Bergier) Commission of Experts issued its report,
Switzerland and Gold

Transactions in the Second World
War.
40
The Commission confirmed that Swiss banks purchased

gold from Nazi Germany, worth about $4 billion in current values, knowing that it had been plundered

from the central banks of occupied Europe. Throughout the hearings on Capitol Hill, members of

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