Ethics a Key in Issue of Holocaust Assets

Switzerland said it will consider ethics as well as the letter of the law in deciding what to do with any unclaimed wealth of Holocaust victims that it finds and for which no heirs have emerged. “We won’t be protecting ourselves only behind legal parameters,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Philippe Tissieres said. “There is the law, and there is ethics. We will make a due mixture of the two things.” Switzerland has faced criticism from Jewish groups that charge it has not done enough to turn up unclaimed assets of Jews who hid their wealth in Swiss banks before perishing at the hands of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.