Swiss Banks OK Search for Holocaust Victims’ Assets

Swiss bankers agreed Thursday to relax their vaunted secrecy laws and search for millions of dollars--possibly even billions--deposited by Jews who later died in the Holocaust.

A six-member commission will receive claims of Holocaust survivors and heirs and supervise auditors who will trace the claims. The Swiss Bankers Assn. and a coalition of Jewish organizations each appointed three members.

“We’re going into unprecedented territory,” said Avraham Burg, one of the signers and the chairman of the Jerusalem-based Jewish Agency.

Switzerland’s famous bank secrecy laws were enacted in the 1930s to safeguard assets by hiding the identity of depositors, but the laws have thwarted heirs of Holocaust victims who could not identify the secret, numbered accounts of deceased relatives.

The agreement is aimed at resolving a dispute over the whereabouts of money deposited by people who were among the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II.

Swiss bankers previously said they had found about $34 million in unclaimed accounts, presumably belonging to Holocaust victims. But Jewish groups have accused the banks of holding up to $7 billion.

Edgar M. Bronfman, who signed on behalf of the World Jewish Congress, said the search for lost and looted Jewish property would go beyond banks to other institutions, such as insurance companies, and to other countries, such as former communist states of Europe.

“There are insurance companies and lots of other places, and not just in Switzerland, where we think there is not only Jewish money deposited by Jews, but Jewish money that was deposited by German looters from 1933 to 1945,” Bronfman said.

Elan Steinberg, the World Jewish Congress executive director, said that since the end of World War II “at least 7,000 claims have been filed with Swiss banks.”

Steinberg said he expects the biggest number of accounts to be found will belong to deceased people whose families were wiped out by the Nazis. The money from accounts without living claimants will go to Jewish charities, Bronfman said.