Holocaust Settlement

Re “2 Swiss Banks to Pay $1.25 Billion in Holocaust Suits,” Aug. 13: So, the Swiss banks say giving back a large amount of money to Holocaust survivors “represents full financial and moral restitution” for their actions that, over the past 50 years, have not only added to the sense that there was a conspiracy throughout Europe to persecute the Jews, but have also deprived survivors and their families of what they had left after the war. They say this “represents . . . their long-standing efforts to ensure justice is served.” Is that why their original niggardly offer of no more than $600 million stayed on the table so long? Is that why class-action lawsuits had to be brought and sanctions threatened before action was taken?

The attitude the Swiss banks project can’t be written off as more evidence of anti-Semitism in WWII and post-WWII. It goes deeper to a basic inhuman coldness that reduces us all to numbers and units. It’s this kind of thinking that you aren’t guilty until you’re caught, that money can make up for human loss, that allows atrocities like the Holocaust.

What have we learned?

ELKE KOLODINSKI

Culver City

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History is filled with the unforgivable stains of moral cowardice. How glorious to see private citizens and institutions stand up, in the face of blatant Swiss stonewalling, and say we have seen enough and will not tolerate this anymore. What a noble legacy this would be if it were truly the way of the world. No more witch hunts, land grabs, lynchings, internments, blacklists. Everyone doing the just and courageous act.

REX L. ALTMAN

Los Angeles