The Holocaust Industry (19 page)

"Were it not for the United States of America," Eizenstat aptly observed in his paean to Congress,

"very few, if any, of these activities would be ongoing today." To justify the pressures exerted on

Eastern Europe, he explained that a hallmark of "Western" morality is to "return or pay compensation

for communal and private property wrongfully appropriated." For the "new democracies" in Eastern

Europe, meeting this standard "would be commensurate with their passage from totalitarianism to

democratic states." Eizenstat is a senior US government official and a prominent supporter of Israel.

Yet, judging by the respective claims of Native Americans and Palestinians, neither the US nor Israel

has yet made the transition.
85

In his House testimony, Hirschson conjured the melancholy spectacle of aging "needy Holocaust

victims" from Poland "coming to me to my office in the Knesset each day . . . begging to get back

what belongs to them . . . to get back the houses they left, to get back the stores they left." Meanwhile,

the Holocaust industry wages battle on a second front. Repudiating the specious mandate of the World

Jewish Restitution Organization, local Jewish communities in Eastern Europe have staked out their

own claims on heirless Jewish assets. To benefit from such a claim, however, a Jew must formally

adhere to the local Jewish community. The hoped-for revival of Jewish life is thus coming to pass as

Eastern European Jews parlay their newly discovered roots into a cut of the Holocaust booty.
86

The Holocaust industry boasts of earmarking compensation monies for charitable Jewish causes.

"While charity is a noble cause," a lawyer representing the actual victims observes, "it is wrong to

perform it with other people's money." One favorite cause is "Holocaust education" — the "greatest

legacy of our efforts," according to Eizenstat. Hirschson is also founder of an organization called

"March of the Living," a centerpiece of Holocaust education and a major beneficiary of compensation

monies. In this Zionist-inspired spectacle with a cast of thousands, Jewish youth from around the

world converge on the death camps in Poland for first-hand instruction in Gentile wickedness before

being flown off to Israel for salvation. The
Jerusalem Report
captures this Holocaust kitsch moment

on the March: "'I'm so scared, I can't go on, I want to be in Israel already,' repeats a young Connecticut

woman over and over. Her body is shaking.... Suddenly her friend pulls out a large Israeli flag. She

wraps it around the two of them and they move on." An Israeli flag: don't leave home without it.
87

Speaking at the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, David Harris of the AJC waxed

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eloquent on the "profound impact» pilgrimages to Nazi death camps have on Jewish youth. The

Forward
took note of an episode particularly fraught with pathos. Under the headline "Israeli Teens

Frolic With Strippers After Auschwitz Visit," the newspaper explained that, according to experts, the

kibbutz students "hired strippers to release the troubling emotions raised by the trip." These same

torments apparently racked Jewish students on a US Holocaust Memorial Museum field trip who,

according to the
Forward,
"were running around and having a wonderful time and feeling each other

up and whatever."
88
Who can doubt the wisdom of the Holocaust industry's decision to earmark

compensation monies for Holocaust education rather than "fritter away the funds" (Nahum Goldmann)

on survivors of Nazi death camps?
89

In January 2000 officials from nearly fifty states, including Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel,

attended a major Holocaust education conference in Stockholm. The conference's final declaration

underlined the international community's "solemn responsibility" to fight the evils of genocide, ethnic

cleansing, racism and xenophobia. A Swedish reporter afterward asked Barak about the Palestinian

refugees. On principle, Barak replied, he was against even one refugee coming to Israel: "We cannot

accept moral, legal, or other responsibility for refugees." Plainly the conference was a huge success.
90

The Jewish Claims Conference's official
Guide to Compensation and Restitution for Holocaust

Survivors
lists scores of organizational affiliates. A vast, well-heeled bureaucracy has sprung up.

Insurance companies, banks, art museums, private industry, tenants and farmers in nearly every

European country are under the Holocaust industry gun. But the "needy Holocaust victims" in whose

name the Holocaust industry acts complain that it is "just perpetuating the expropriation." Many have

filed suit against the Claims Conference. The Holocaust may yet turn out to be the "greatest robbery in

the history of mankind."
91

When Israel first entered into negotiations with Germany for reparations after the war, historian Ilan

Pappe reports, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett proposed transferring a part to Palestinian refugees, "in

order to rectify what has been called the small injustice (the Palestinian tragedy), caused by the more

terrible one (the Holocaust)."
92
Nothing ever came of the proposal. A prominent Israeli academic has

suggested using some of the funds from the Swiss banks and German firms for the "compensation of

Palestinian Arab refugees."
93
Given that almost all survivors of the Nazi holocaust have already

passed away, this would seem to be a sensible proposal.

In vintage WJC style, Israel Singer made the "startling announcement" on 13 March 2000 that a newly

declassified US document revealed that Austria was holding heirless Holocaust-era assets of Jews

worth yet another $10 billion. Singer also charged that "fifty percent of America's total art is looted

Jewish art."
94
The Holocaust industry has clearly gone berserk.

Footnotes:

1
Henry Friedlander, "Darkness and Dawn in 1945 The Nazis, the Allies, and the Survivors," in us

Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1945—the Year of Liberation
(Washington 1995), Il-35.

2
See, for example, Segev,
Seventh Million,
248.

3
Lappin,
Man With Two Heads, 48.
D.D. Guttenplan, "The Holocaust on Trial," in
Atlantic Monthly

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(February 2000), 62 (but cf. text above, where Lipstadt equates doubting a survivor's testimony with

Holocaust denial).

4
Wiesel,
AR Rivers,
121 - 30, 139, 163 - 4, 201 - 2, 336.
Jewish Week,
17 September 1999.
New York

Times
, 5 March 1997.

5
Leonard Dinnerstein,
America and the Survivors of the Holocaust
(New York: 1982), 24.

6
Daniel Ganzfried, "
Binjamin Wilkomirski und die verwandelte Polin
," in
Weltwoche
(4 November

1999).

7
Marilyn B. Young,
The Vietnam Wars
(New York: 1991), 301 - 2. "Cohen: US Not Sorry for

Vietnam War," in
Associated Press (11
March 2000).

8
For background, see esp. Nana Sagi,
German Reparations
(New York: 1986), and Ronald W.

Zweig,
German Reparations and the Jewish World
(Boulder: 1987). Both volumes are official

histories commissioned by the Claims Conference.

9
In reply to a question recently put by German Parliament member Martin Hohmann (CDU), the

German government acknowledged (albeit in extremely convoluted language) that only about 15

percent of the monies given to the Claims Conference actually benefited Jewish victims of Nazi

persecution. (personal communication, 23 February 2000)

10
In his official history, Ronald Zweig explicitly acknowledges that the Claims Conference violated

the agreement's terms: "The influx of Conference funds allowed the Joint [Distribution Committee] to

continue programs in Europe it would otherwise have terminated, and to undertake programs it would

otherwise not have considered because of lack of funds. But the most significant change in the JDC

budget resulting from reparations payments was the allocation for the Moslem countries, where the

Joint's activities increased by an average of 68 percent during the first three years of Conference

allocations. Despite the formal restrictions on the use of the reparation funds in the agreement with

Germany, the money was used where the needs were the greatest. Moses Leavitt [senior Claims

Conference officer] . . observed: 'Our budget was based on priority of needs in and outside of Israel,

the Moslem countries, all included.... We did not consider the Conference fund as anything but a part

of a general fund placed at our disposal in order to meet the area of Jewish needs for which we were

responsible, the area of greatest priority"'
(German Reparations,
74).

11
See for example Lorraine Adams, "The Reckoning," in
Washington Post Magazine
(20 April

1997), Netty C. Gross, "The Old Boys Club," and "After Years of Stonewalling, the Claims

Conference Changes Policy," in
Jerusalem Report (15
May 1997, 16 August 1997), Rebecca Spence,

"Holocaust Insurance Team Racking Up Millions in Expenses as Survivors Wait," in
Forward
(30

July 1999), and Verena Dobnik, "Oscar Hammerstein's Cousin Sues German Bank Over Holocaust

Assets," in
AP Online
(20 November 1998) (Hertzberg).

12
Greg B. Smith, "Federal Judge OKs Holocaust Accord," in
Daily News
(7 January 2000). Janny

Scott, "Jews Tell of Holocaust Deposits," in
New York Times
(17 October 1996). Saul Kagan read a

draft of this section on the Claims Conference. The final version incorporates all his factual

corrections.

13
Elli Wohlgelernter, "Lawyers and the Holocaust," in Jerusalem
Post
(6 July 1999).

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14
For background to this section, see Tom Bower,
Nazi Gold
(New York: 1998), Itamar Levin,
The

Last Deposit
(Westport, Conn.: 1999), Gregg J. Rickman,
Swiss Banks and Jewish Souls
(New

Brunswick, NJ: 1999), Isabel Vincent,
Hitler's Silent Partners
(New York: 1997), Jean Ziegler,
The

Swiss, the Gold and the Dead
(New York: 1997). Although suffering from a pronounced anti-Swiss

bias, these books contain much useful information.

15
Levin,
Last Deposit,
chaps 6 - 7. For the erroneous Israeli report (although he doesn't mention it,

Levin was the author), see Hans J. Halbheer, "To Our American Friends," in
American Swiss

Foundation Occasional Papers
(n.d.).

16
Thirteen branches of six Swiss banks operated in the United States. Swiss banks loaned American

businesses $38 billion in 1994, and managed hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in

American stocks and banks for their clients.

17
In 1992, the WJC spawned a new organization, the World Jewish Restitution Organization

(WJRO), which claimed legal jurisdiction over the assets of Holocaust survivors, living and dead.

Headed by Bronfman, the WJRO is formally an umbrella of Jewish organizations modeled on the

Jewish Claims Conference.

18
Hearings before the committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate, 23

April 1996. Bronfman's defense of "Jewish interests" is Highly selective. He is a major business

associate of the right-wing German media mogul Leo Kirch, notorious m recent years for trying to fire

a German newspaper editor who supported a supreme court decision barring Christian crosses in

public schools.
(www.Seagram.com/company_info/history/main.html;
Oliver Gehrs, "Einfluss aus der

Dose," in
Tagesspiegel
[l2 September 1995])

19
Rickman,
Swiss Banks, 50 - 1.
Bower,
Nazi Gold,
299 - 300.

20
Bower,
Nazi Gold,
295 ("mouthpiece"), 306 - 7; cf. 319. Alan Morris Schom, "The Unwanted

Guests, Swiss Forced Labor Camps, 1940 - 1944," A Report Prepared for the Simon Wiesenthal

center, January 1998. (Schom states these were "in reality slave-labor camps.") Levin,
Last Deposit,

158, 188. For a sober treatment of the Swiss refugee camps, see Ken Newman (ed.),
Swiss Wartime

Work Camps: A Collection of Eyewitness Testimonies, 1940 - 1945
(Zurich: I 999), and International

commission of Experts, Switzerland - Second World war,
Switzerland and Refugees in the Nazi Era

(Bern: 1999), chap. 4.4.4. Saidel,
Never Too Late,
222 3 ("Dachau", "sensationalistic"). Yossi Klein

Halevi, "Who Owns the Memory?" in
Jerusalem Report
(25 February 1993). Wiesenthal rents out his

name to the center for $90,000 annually.

21
Bower,
Nazi Gold, xi, xv,
8, 9, 42, 44, 56, 84, 100, 150, 219, 304. Rickman,
Swiss Banks,
219.

22
Thomas Sancton,
"A
Painful History," in
Time,
24 February 1997. Hearings before the committee

on Banking and Financial services, House of Representatives, 25 June 1997. Rower,
Nazi Gold,
301 2.

Rickman,
Swiss Banks,
48. Levin is equally silent on Salmanovitz being a Jew (cf. s, 129, 135).

23
Levin,
Last Deposit, 60.
Hearings before the Committee on Banking and Financiil Services, House

of Representatives, 11 December 1996 (quoting Wiesel's 16 October 1996 Senate Banking Committee

testimony). Raul Hilberg,
The Destruction of the European Jews
(New York: 1961), chap. 5.

24
Hearings before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate, 6

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May 1997.

25
Hearings before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, House of Representatives, 11

December 1996. Smith complained to the press that the documents he had unearthed long before were

being touted by D'Amato as new discoveries. In a bizarre defense, Rickman, who mobilized a massive

contingent of researchers through the US Holocaust museum for the Congressional hearings, replies:

"While I knew about Smith's book, I made a point of not reading it so that I could not be accused of

using 'his' documents" (113). Vincent,
Silent Partners, 240.

26
Bower,
Nazi Gold,
307. Hearings before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, House

of Representatives,
25
June 1997.

27
Rickman,
Swiss Banks, 77.
For the definitive treatment of this topic, see Peter Hug and Marc

Perrenoud,
Assets in Switzerland of Victims of Nazism and the Compensation Agreements with East

Bloc Countries
(Bern
1997).
For early discussion in the United States, see Seymour J. Rubin and Abba

P. Schwartz, "Refugees and Reparations," in
Law and Contemporary Problems
(Duke University

School of Law, 1951), 283.

28
Levin,
Last Deposit,
93, 186. Hearings before the Committee on Banking and Financial services,

House of Representatives, 11 December 1996. Rickman,
Swiss Banks,
218. Bower,
Nazi Gold,
318,

323. A week after establishing the Special Fund, Switzerland's president, "terrified of unremitting

hostility in America" (Rower), announced the creation of a $8 billion Solidarity Foundation "to reduce

poverty, despair, and violence" globally. The foundation's approval, however, required a national

referendum, and domestic opposition quickly surfaced.
Its
fate remains uncertain.

29
Bower,
Nazi Gold,
315. Vincent,
Silent Partners,
211. Rickman,
Swiss Banks,
184 (Voleker).

30
Levin,
Last Deposit,
187 - 8, 125.

31
Levin,
Last Deposit,
218. Rickman,
Swiss Banks,
214, 223, 221.

32
Hickman,
Swiss Banks,
231.

33
Ibid. Rickman fittingly entitled this chapter of his account, "Boycotts and Diktats."

34
For the complete text of the "Class Action Settlement Agreement," see Independent Committee of

Eminent Persons,
Report on Dormant Accounts of Victims of Nazi Persecution in Swiss Banks
(Bern:

1999), Appendix O. In addition to the $200 million Special Fund and the $1.25 billion class-action

settlement, the Holocaust industry finagled another $70 million from the United States and its allies

during a 1997 London conference on the Swiss gold.

35
For US policy on Jewish refugees during these years, see David S. Wyman,
Paper Walls
(New

York: 1985), and
The Abandonment of the Jews
(New York: 1984). For Swiss policy, see Independent

Commission of Experts, Switzerland — Second World War,
Switzerland and Refugees in the Nazi Era

(Bern: 1999). A similar mix of factors — economic downturn, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and, later,

security — accounted for the restrictive American and Swiss quotas. recalling the "hypocrisy in the

speeches by other nations, especially the United States which was completely uninterested in

liberalizing its immigration laws," the Independent Commission, although harshly critical of

Switzerland, reports that its refugee policy was "like the governments of most other states." (42, 263) I

found no mention of this point in the extensive US media coverage of the Commission's critical

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findings.

36
Hearings before the Committee on Banking, Housing, amd Urban Affairs, United States Senate, 15

May 1997 (Eizenstat and D'Amato). Hearings before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban

Affairs, United States Senate, 23 April 1996 (BronDman, quoting Clinton and letter of Congressional

leaders). Hearings before the Committee on Banking and Fmancial Services, House of

Representatives, 11 December 1996 (Leach). Hearings before the Committee on Banking and

Financial Services, House of Representatives, 25 June 1997 (Leach). Rickman,
Swiss Banks,
204

(Albright).

37
The only discordant note during the multiple Congressional hearings on Holocaust compensation

was sounded by Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California. While registering "1000 percent"

support "to get justice for all of the victims of the Holocaust," Waters also questioned "how to take

this format and use it to deal with slave labor of my ancestors here in the United States. It's very

strange to sit here . . . without wondering what I could be doing ... to acknowledge slave labor in the

United States.... Reparations in the African-American community have been basically condemned as a

radical idea, and many of those . . . who tried so hard to get this issue before the Congress have

literally been ridiculed." Specifically she proposed that government agencies directed to achieving

Holocaust compensation be directed as well to achieving compensation for "domestic slave labor."

"The gentle lady raises an extraordinarily profound subject," James Leach of the House Banking

Committee replied, "and the Chair will take it under advisement.... The profoundness of the issue you

raise in an American historical setting as well as in the human rights setting is deep." The issue will

undoubtedly be deposited deep in the Committee's memory hole. (Hearings before the Committee on

Banking and Financial Services, House of Representatives, 9 February 2000) Randall Robinson, who

is currently leading a campaign to compensate African-Americans for slavery, juxtaposed the US

government's "silence" on this theft "even as the US Undersecretary of State, Stuart Eizenstat, labored

to make 16 German companies compensate Jews used as slave laborers during the Nazi era." (Randall

Robinson, "Compensate the Forgotten Victims of America's Slavery Holocaust," in
Los Angeles Times

[11 February 2000]; cf. Randall Robinson,
The Debt
[New York: 2000], 245)

38
Philip Lentz, "Reparation woes," in
Crain's
(15 - 21 November 1999). Michael Shapiro, "Lawyers

in Swiss Bank Settlement Submit Bill, Outraging Jewish Groups," in
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
(23

November 1999). Rebecca Spence, "Hearings on Legal Fees in Swiss Bank Case," in
Forward
(26

November 1999). James Bone, "Holocaust Survivors Protest Over Legal Fee," in
The Times
(London)