The Holocaust Industry (16 page)

Congress expressed shock that Swiss banks had trafficked in looted assets and, even worse, still

indulged these egregious practices. Deploring the fact that corrupt politicians deposit their ill-gotten

gains in Swiss banks, one Congressman called on Switzerland to finally enact legislation against "this

secret movement of money by . . . people of political prominence or leadership, of people looting their

treasury." Bewailing the "number of international, high profile corrupt government officials and

businesspeople who have found sanctuary for their substantial wealth in Swiss banks," another

Congressman wondered aloud whether «the Swiss banking system is accommodating this generation's

thugs, and the countries they represent, in . . . ways that sanctuary was given to the Nazi regime
55

years ago?"
41
Truly the problem warrants concern. Annually an estimated $100 - $200 billion arising

from political corruption is sent across borders worldwide and deposited in private banks. The

Congressional banking committee reprimands would have carried more weight, however, if fully half

this "illegal flight capital" weren't deposited in American banks with the complete sanction of US

law.
42
Recent beneficiaries of this legal US "sanctuary" include Raul Salinas de Gortari, the brother

of Mexico's former president, and the family of former Nigerian dictator General Sani Abacha. "The

gold looted by Adolf Hitler and his henchmen," Jean Ziegler, a Swiss parliamentarian fiercely critical

of the Swiss banks, observes, "does not differ in essence from the blood money" now held in the

private Swiss accounts of Third World dictators. "Millions of men, women, and children were driven

to their deaths by Hitler's licensed thieves," and "hundreds of thousands of children die annually of

disease and malnutrition" in the Third World because "tyrants despoiled their countries with the aid of

Swiss financial sharks."
43
And with the aid of American financial sharks as well. I leave to one side

the even more important point that many of these tyrants were installed and maintained by US power

and authorized by the United States to despoil their countries.

On the specific question of the Nazi holocaust, the Independent Commission concluded that the Swiss

banks did purchase «bars containing gold looted by Nazi criminals from the victims of work camps

and extermination camps." They didn't, however, knowingly do so: «there is no indication that the

decision-makers at the Swiss central bank knew that bars containing such gold were being shipped to

Switzerland by the Reichsbank." The Commission put the value of "victim gold" unwittingly

purchased by Switzerland at $134,428, or about $1 million in current values. This figure includes

"victim gold" stripped from Jewish as well as non-Jewish camp inmates.
44

In December 1999 the Independent (Volcker) Committee of Eminent Persons issued its
Report on

Dormant Accounts of Victims of Nazi Persecution in Swiss Banks.
45
The
Report
documents the

findings of an exhaustive audit that lasted three years and cost no less than $500 million.
46
Its central

finding on the "treatment of dormant accounts of victims of Nazi persecution" merits extended

quotation:

[F]or victims of Nazi persecution there was no evidence of systematic discrimination, obstruction of

access, misappropriation, or violation of document retention requirements of Swiss law. However, the

Report also criticizes the actions of some banks in their treatment of the accounts of victims of Nazi

persecution. The word "some" in the preceding sentence needs to be emphasized since the criticized

actions refer mainly to those of specific banks in their handling of individual accounts of victims of

Nazi persecution in the context of an investigation of 254 banks covering a period of about 60 years.

For the criticized actions, the Report also recognizes that there were mitigating circumstances for the

conduct of the banks involved in these activities. The Report acknowledges, moreover, that there is

ample evidence of many cases in which banks actively sought out missing account holders or their

heirs, including Holocaust victims, and paid account balances of dormant accounts to the proper

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parties.

The paragraph mildly concludes that "the Committee believes the criticized actions are of sufficient

importance that it is desirable to document in this section the things that did go wrong so that it is

possible to learn from the past rather than repeat its mistakes."
47

The
Report
also found that, although the Committee couldn't track down all the bank records for the

"Relevant Period" (1933-45), destruction of records without detection "would be difficult, if not

impossible," and that "in fact, no evidence of systematic destruction of account records for the purpose

of concealing past behavior has been found." It concludes that the percentage of records recovered (60

percent) was "truly extraordinary" and "truly remarkable," especially given that Swiss law does not

require retention of records beyond 10 years.
48

Yet, compare the
New York Times's
rendering of the Volcker Committee findings. Under an editorial

headline, "The Deceptions of Swiss Banks,"
49
the
Times
reported that the Committee found "no

conclusive evidence" that Swiss banks mishandled dormant Jewish accounts. Yet the
Report

categorically stated "no evidence." The
Times
goes on to state that the Committee "found that Swiss

banks had somehow managed to lose track of a shockingly large number of these accounts." Yet the

Report
found that the Swiss preserved records of a "truly extraordinary," "truly remarkable" number.

Finally, the
Times
reports that, according to the Committee, "many banks had cruelly and deceptively

turned away family members trying to recover lost assets." In fact, the
Report
emphasizes that only

"some" banks misbehaved and that there were "mitigating circumstances" in these cases, and it points

out as well the "many cases" in which banks actively sought out legitimate claimants.

The
Report
does fault the Swiss banks for not being "straightforward and forthright" in prior audits of

dormant Holocaust-era accounts. Nonetheless, it seems to credit the shortfall in these audits more to

technical factors than malfeasance.
50
The
Report
identifies 54,000 accounts with a «probable or

possible relationship with victims of Nazi persecution." But it judges that only in the case of half this

number— 25,000 - was the likelihood significant enough to warrant publication of account names.

The estimated current value of 10,000 of these accounts for which some information was available

runs to $170-$260 million. It proved impossible to estimate the current value of the remaining

accounts.
51
The total value of actual dormant Holocaust era accounts will likely climb much higher

than the $32 million originally estimated by the Swiss banks, but will still fall staggeringly short of the

$7 - $20 billion claimed by the WJC. In subsequent Congressional testimony, Volcker observed that

the number of Swiss accounts "probably or possibly" related to Holocaust victims was "many times as

large as that emerging from previous Swiss investigations." However, he continued: "l emphasize the

words 'probably or possibly' because, except in a relatively few cases, after more than half a century,

we were not able to identify with certainty an irrefutable relationship between victims and account

holders."
52

The most explosive finding of the Volcker Committee went unreported in the American media.

Alongside Switzerland, the Committee observes, the US was
also
a primary safe haven for

transferable Jewish assets in Europe:

The anticipation of war and economic distress, as well as the persecution of Jews and other minorities

by the Nazis prior to and during World War II, caused many people, including the victims of this

persecution, to move their assets to countries deemed to provide safe havens (importantly including

the United States and the United Kingdom).... In view of neutral Switzerland's borders with Axis and

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Axis-occupied countries, Swiss banks and other Swiss financial intermediaries were also recipients of

a portion of the assets in search of safety.

An important appendix lists the "favored destinations', of Jewish transferable assets in Europe. The

main stated destinations were the US and Switzerland. (Great Britain came in a "low third" as a stated

destination.)53

The obvious question is, What happened to the dormant Holocaust era accounts in
American
banks?

The House Banking Committee did call one expert witness to testify on this issue. Seymour Rubin,

currently a professor at American University, served as deputy chief of the US delegation in the Swiss

negotiations after World War II. Under the auspices of American Jewish organizations Rubin also

worked during the 1950s with a "group of experts on Jewish communal life in Europe" to identify

dormant Holocaust-era accounts in US banks. In his House testimony Rubin stated that, after a most

superficial and rudimentary audit of just New York banks, the value of these accounts was put at $6

million. Jewish organizations requested this sum for "needy survivors" from Congress (abandoned

dormant accounts in the US are transferred to the state under the doctrine of escheat). Rubin then

recalled:

[T]he initial estimate of $6 million was rejected by potential Congressional sponsors of the necessary

legislation and a limit of $3 million was used in the original draft legislation.... In the event, the $3

million figure was slashed in Committee hearings to $1 million. Legislative action further reduced the

amount to $500,000. Even that amount was opposed by the Bureau of the Budget, which proposed a

limit of $250,000. The legislation however passed with the $500,000.

"The United States," Rubin concluded, "took only very limited measures to identify heirless assets in

the United States, and made available ... a mere $500,000, in contrast to the $32,000,000

acknowledged by Swiss banks even prior to the Volcker inquiry."
54

In other words,
the US record is much worse than the Swiss record.
It bears emphasis that, apart from

a fleeting remark by Eizenstat, there was no other mention of the dormant US accounts during the

House and Senate banking committee hearings devoted to the Swiss banks. Moreover, although Rubin

plays a pivotal role in the many secondary accounts of the Swiss banks affair—Bower devotes scores

of pages to this "crusader in the State Department" — none mention his House testimony. During the

House hearing Rubin also expressed "a certain amount of skepticism with respect to the large amounts

[in dormant Swiss accounts] which are being talked about." Needless to say, Rubin's precise insights

on this matter were also studiously ignored.

Where was the Congressional hue and cry over "perfidious" American bankers? One member after

another of the Senate and House banking committees clamored for the Swiss to "finally pay up."

None, however, called on the US to do so. Rather, a House Banking Committee member shamelessly