Local Holocaust Survivors Seek Swiss Aid

Masha Loen heard about the Swiss banks’ trove of Nazi gold--and a new Swiss humanitarian fund--and thought about the gold, heart-signet earrings German soldiers ripped from her earlobes 57 years ago when they came to roust her family from their home in Lithuania.

And she thought about her grandfather’s teeth; the Nazis took them, too, for the gold fillings. That was the same grandpa who gave her the earrings and matching ring for her fifth birthday, she remembered.

The Germans took her mother’s diamond and platinum rings, her father’s pocket watch and any other piece of metal that might have been worth something. They took all of the family’s treasures--which she figures could have been among those melted down with other Holocaust victims’ gold and stored in the Bern vaults of the Swiss National Bank.

“The Germans took our [possessions] and brought them to the Swiss banks,” said the 70-year-old Loen, who lives in Studio City. “The survivors are dying, and the money will be lost.”

Following independent research into the origins of Switzerland’s Nazi gold, the Swiss government recently began accepting applications for its Fund for Needy Victims of the Holocaust. The $185-million aid package--about $31.4 million of which is earmarked for U.S. survivors--is a purely humanitarian gesture, the Swiss said, and should not be viewed as reparations or restitution.

Indeed, a $1.25-billion settlement in August regarding unreturned assets from Nazi-era accounts is funded by private banks and industries, not the Swiss National Bank, which says it has no need to make further amends.

But the banks’ settlement does not directly address the so-called “victim gold” from concentration camp prisoners once held in national coffers, because, unlike the dormant bank accounts, the gold is impossible to trace and even harder to give back.

Tracing the Sale of ‘Victim Gold’

In May the multinational Bergier Commission, appointed by the Swiss government, reported that the Swiss National Bank knew that much of the gold it bought from Nazi Germany was plundered.

The commission found there was no direct evidence that bank officials knew some of their purchases included “victim gold.” But it noted that, by 1941, bank managers knew that Jews and others were being robbed. The commission found evidence that by 1943 the managers knew about Nazi death camps.

By the time the Swiss fund is parceled, the grant amounts are likely to total just a few hundred dollars for each needy Holocaust victim. But for the 3,000 Los Angeles-area Holocaust survivors who live below the poverty level--less than $7,698 a year for a single senior citizen--every little bit helps.

And because of those bars of smelted earrings, dental work and family treasures, Loen and hundreds of poor survivors throughout Los Angeles have begun applying for the Swiss fund. They argue that, because the Swiss have profited for more than half a century from their possessions, the country owes them something.

To receive compensation from the fund, survivors must request applications by Nov. 17. A recipient must be a Jew who lived in a country that was governed by Nazis or their collaborators, a citizen or legal resident of the United States, and needy.

“Lots and lots of people called and came in, and now people are coming in for help with the forms,” said Dorie Gradwohl, director of the Jewish Family Service’s Valley Storefront in North Hollywood. “They feel they deserve the money--which we all believe they do--but it stirs up a lot of old memories.”

Memories of Wartime

Irving Scharf, an 80-year-old resident of Panorama City, cannot help but remember where the Nazis shot him nearly 60 years ago, because the wound never healed correctly. He limped into the Valley Storefront slowly one day after the fund was announced, to ask if he could apply.

Money is tight these days for Scharf. Thirty years as a garment cutter in downtown Los Angeles provided enough to buy a small house and rear two children but not much in the way of savings. Too proud to accept help from his son and daughter, he makes do with about $800 a month in Social Security payments, which, with all his medical bills, barely stretches from check to check.

Before the war, Scharf, his parents and seven siblings lived a comfortable life in Poland. His father, a watch repairman, and mother, a homemaker, owned a house full of beautiful things, Scharf recalled.

The Nazis took all of it and more.

Scharf last saw his six brothers and one sister when they attempted an escape from a Polish concentration camp near the Russian border. The Nazis fired, and he went down.

“My brothers disappeared,” he said. “I was alone.”

After the war, only he and one brother survived to find each other in a German displaced persons camp. He never found out what happened to the rest of his family, but he could guess.

“They were smart,” he said. “If they were alive, they would have come to the refugee camp.”

Scharf said he never applied for reparations and never asked for anything. In fact, he said, he does not like to talk about his experiences during the war. This is an exception.

“I need to do this,” he said. “It’s 50 years passed with nothing. Let’s start to make an apology.”

Lena Ross, 80, has lived in the Fairfax District since she retired to Los Angeles several years ago. Before that, she and her husband, whom she met in the refugee camps, lived in Chino, where they worked on a chicken ranch.

It had been a long journey to the United States.

She was living in Lithuania with her first husband, a doctor, and their 3-year-old son when the Nazis invaded. Neither they nor any others in her family survived the war.

Ross lived through five concentration camps and, as the war wound down, a 150-mile death march through the snow, when the Nazis took their prisoners with them as they fled advancing Russian and American troops.

“I see everything before my eyes,” she said. “If someone told me these things, I would think they were exaggerating. How could a human being go through what we went through?”

So although life is hard now, especially after her husband’s death four years ago, Ross said she doesn’t like to complain. “We were lucky,” she said.

‘I Could Have Lived a Whole Life’

It is hard for her to admit that she meets the fund’s requirement that applicants be needy; but not so hard that she is going to forgo the application.

“My grandma used to tell me, ‘Whenever you don’t have, you should never tell, because people should not feel sorry for you,’ ” she said. “But with all the gold they took from my father, I could have lived a whole life.

“They could never repay with money--but the money they took, why should they have it?”

When Loen thinks about everything she has suffered, she asks the same question.

She was a child in Lithuania when the Germans rounded up her family and sent them to the Kovno Ghetto.

Her father’s skills as a tailor kept the family alive through several “sortings,” when thousands of ghetto residents were marched into a field and evaluated for their fitness to work. Those chosen for labor were sent back to the ghetto. The others were lined up and shot.

“We heard the machine guns,” she said. “The graves were already dug.”

In 1944, however, even her father could no longer save the family. Loen’s mother heard about another sorting and tried to hide Loen’s two younger sisters. For that, the entire family was sent to the death camps: the men to Dachau, the women to Stutthof.

Loen’s mother and sisters were separated from her as soon as they arrived. The older woman and younger girls were sent to their deaths. Loen, barely 14, was kept alive and sent to the SS gynecologist for examination.

“They said he was looking for gold,” she recalled.

Fund Application Has Healing Effect

Now the coordinator of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, Loen explained that applying for the fund is therapeutic.

She often visits schools and community groups to talk about her experiences during the war. But filling out the application, which asked her to provide the names and dates of the places and times she lived in the camps, is her way of seeking a small measure of justice.

“It’s nobody else’s money but ours,” Loen said. “We are entitled to much more than we are getting.”

Applications for the Swiss Fund for Needy Victims of the Holocaust are available by calling the fund’s processing center at (800) 549-6864.