Cutting the Cloth of Atonement

In thousands of synagogues around the world, Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, will be marked this month with solemnity and prayer as it has for centuries.

At the same time, rabbis from Brooklyn to Budapest and Burbank to Brisbane will be asked to depart from tradition by reading a letter during the services that is in part a celebration and a plea for patience.

The letter is from the committee of lawyers who negotiated the historic agreement requiring two Swiss banks to pay $1.25 billion to settle a suit filed by Holocaust survivors and their heirs.

The missive is the first public step in what will be an extraordinary and complicated process of distributing assets held by the banks for more than half a century--the first such restitution achieved through a U.S. court.

It is an unprecedented task, underlined not only by the politics of repentance but by the perception of fairness as people who have undergone historic suffering wait to receive funds long denied.

Key participants stress that they want to get the first chunk of funds--$250 million--distributed within a year. But since thousands of potentially eligible claimants--both Holocaust survivors and the heirs of those murdered--are scattered around the world, since numerous Jewish and non-Jewish organizations have a stake in the outcome and since the entire matter is suffused with highly emotional issues, this goal may not be easy to achieve.

Meetings on the issue already have been held with survivors and Jewish groups in New York, Jerusalem and Moscow--with dozens more planned around the world to discuss options for allocating the money.

“Now the hard part starts,” said New York University Law School professor Burt Neuborne, a member of the steering committee working to forge the distribution scheme.

“It’s a highly complex problem,” observed Philip Baum, executive director of the American Jewish Congress. “It will be a serious undertaking to find out the feeling of Jews around the world about how to do it most equitably. None of us has an answer now.”

Major Jewish organizations are mobilizing to help Holocaust victims file claims. That process--which will begin after a distribution plan is approved by Judge Edward Korman in federal court in Brooklyn--will include toll-free phone numbers, Internet sites and mass mailings.

Underlining the gravity and sensitivity of the issue, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is personally involved in the process because such a large number of survivors live in his nation.

“There is a strong feeling that if public money is holy, then money from Holocaust assets is twice holy,” said Bobby Brown, Netanyahu’s advisor on Diaspora affairs. Consequently, every aspect of the process must be subject to full public scrutiny, Brown said.

Leaders of key Jewish groups, as well as attorneys involved in the tough talks with Swiss bankers that led to a settlement, said there are bound to be disappointments.

“The issue is symbolic justice,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. “There is no absolute justice. There is no amount that is enough.”

‘There Is No Way to Be Paid’

Magda Bass of Westwood, who was born in Transylvania, imprisoned in Auschwitz and lost 32 relatives--including her mother, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in Nazi death camps--said: “There is no way to be paid for what my losses are.”

Bass, 71, said she is relatively well off and doesn’t plan to apply for compensation. But she knows many survivors who are poor, in failing health and could be helped by almost any amount of money.

“People are calling every day, every hour, asking me: ‘When do you think the first checks will be coming?’ ” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

In essence, what has emerged under the banner of justice is an arrangement to settle three class-action lawsuits in New York, one in California and another in Washington. And like many such suits against corporations, when the proceeds are divided by the number of plaintiffs, the resulting checks may be relatively small.

Participants in the process say there is a surplus of good ideas about what to do with the money. They lament that even Solomon--the biblical paragon of fairness--might not be able to structure a solution because of the variety of legitimate competing claims.

“You speak to four people, you get five wonderful ideas,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Wiesenthal Center’s assistant dean.

Hier and Cooper, among others, maintain that as much of the money as possible should go to individuals. Others contend that a healthy chunk of the funds should go for broader purposes--such as Jewish education, restoring Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe or even attempting to rebuild Jewish communities that were destroyed by Adolf Hitler and his allies.

Some survivors, such as 80-year-old Mel Wruble--who has severe medical problems stemming in part from five years spent in concentration camps--believe that survivors with sustenance needs should have high priority.

But other survivors, such as Leon Rosenberg of North Hollywood, have different ideas. “I think the money should go to Israel,” said Rosenberg, 82, who spent three years in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Rabbi Shmuel Bloom, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, a major orthodox organization, said some individuals clearly are entitled to compensation. But Bloom said he expects that money will be left over after distributions to individuals and “we believe that these funds should be used to rebuild and continue the Jewish people.”

“The way to rebuild the Jewish people primarily is through education,” Bloom said, stressing the need for scholarship funds and assistance in resurrecting Jewish communities in Poland.

While sympathetic to that goal, Israeli official Brown said there will be difficult choices. “We have a very small community in Poland now--about 2,000 Jews,” Brown said. “Yet 3.2 million Jews of Polish origin perished in the Holocaust. The community’s needs far outweigh its size. There are many holy places and cemeteries to be kept up. How does one judge what weight that has? These are the kinds of questions that are going to come up.”

Others were emphatic that the money should not go to Jewish groups for their normal operations. “The World Jewish Congress should not get money. B’nai B’rith should not get money. The Wiesenthal Center should not get money,” declared Elan Steinberg, director of the World Jewish Congress, which played a critical role in the Swiss bank case.

Beyond their desire to achieve a just result, lawyers and Jewish leaders want to avoid the perception of ugly infighting over money.

“There is growing concern to make sure the memory of the Holocaust and the lessons of the Holocaust are not reduced to dollar signs, however strongly we may individually feel about where funds should go,” the Wiesenthal Center’s Cooper said.

But others are optimistic. “I don’t think this will become a war among the Jews,” said Avraham Burg, director of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem who has been deeply involved in the discussions.

The debate notwithstanding, a rough order of priorities is emerging:

There is general agreement that first payments should be made to survivors or their heirs with accounts clearly identified in the Swiss banks.

Other funds are likely to be earmarked for people facing financial hardships and not having traceable accounts.

The third category, sparking the most initial debate over priorities, will stress continuing education about the Holocaust and fostering Jewish culture.

Complicating matters is the difficulty of precisely defining Holocaust survivors. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world may file claims.

Some think the definition should be limited to people who were imprisoned in concentration camps and managed to stay alive. Others believe in a broader definition, including people in forced labor camps, people who fled from their homes and lived underground, others who left Germany after the Nazi regime started taking draconian measures and still others who managed to flee other Eastern European countries after the Nazis invaded.

Exacerbating the issue is the fact that many of those who perished in the Holocaust died without wills.

Before the allocation issue can be tackled in earnest, the Swiss bank settlement announced Aug. 12--an agreement in principle--has to be finalized and approved by Korman. A written notice describing the deal has to be sent to all known members of the class, meaning the document will have to be translated into at least a dozen languages and distributed worldwide in newspaper advertisements. Any Holocaust survivor will have a chance to file objections with the court before the agreement is approved and before any distribution plan can take effect.

All of those involved in the process are aware of the pressure of time. Many Holocaust victims are frail and elderly. There is clear agreement that they should receive a measure of justice before their lives end.

Because of that concern, Korman is pressing for a speedy blueprint for distribution.

“The judge said as soon as possible,” said Michael Hausfeld, a Washington lawyer representing survivors. “Every one of us is going to move heaven and earth to get the first payment out a year from now.”

Initial payments seem likely to go to individuals with claims to specific Swiss bank accounts.

Since July 1996, former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul A. Volcker has headed a commission seeking to find Holocaust-era accounts of Jews in 35 banks throughout Switzerland. With help from 422 accountants, the commission has discovered 5,770 accounts containing 72 million Swiss francs--about $51 million.

Volcker’s group has received about 10,000 claims on those accounts, said Michael Bradfield, a Washington lawyer serving as the commission’s counsel. Multiple claims have been filed on some accounts because in certain instances there is more than one potential heir. Some of the accounts have gone unclaimed.

Late last month, the steering committee of 10 attorneys representing plaintiffs in suits against the Swiss banks met in a Manhattan law firm with members of Jewish groups and non-Jews who also were targeted by Hitler.

Among them were the International Romani Union--which represents people commonly known as Gypsies--and the Polish American Congress, which represents non-Jewish Poles who were pressed into forced labor after Hitler invaded their country in September 1939. Disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and Soviet prisoners also were persecuted by the Nazis.

Century City lawyer Barry A. Fisher, who represents the Romani and the Polish Congress, said people from all these groups “suffered greatly from the looting and slave labor policies” of the Nazi regime and deserve compensation. Resolving how much they are entitled to will not be an easy matter, Fisher acknowledged.

The decision to ask rabbis worldwide to read a letter on Yom Kippur emerged from the August meeting in New York.

“People are confused. We have to make sure they calm down and understand the process,” said Melvyn I. Weiss, whose law offices served as the meeting site.

Weiss said the letter would assure people that they will have the opportunity to file claims, but money will not be distributed until everyone has a say about fairness.

The letter’s basic message: “Be patient.”

Issue of Payments to Lawyers

Yet another potentially thorny issue is the question of payments to lawyers. Many of the plaintiffs’ attorneys have said they will not ask for fees. But others argue they are entitled to be reimbursed for their work and maintain that the fee issue had ramifications beyond this case.

“For 50 years, the U.S. government had the opportunity to try to provide restitution for what the Swiss did; they were unsuccessful,” said Erwin Levin, an Indianapolis lawyer who is on the steering committee. “Since 1948, the Israeli government had the ability; they were unsuccessful.

“Then a group of lawyers taking great risks and expending hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions, out of their own pockets has now accomplished what was said to be impossible. If we set a precedent that you only can do this kind of case if you don’t get paid, you won’t have more human-rights suits, you’ll have less,” Levin said.

But Steinberg of the World Jewish Congress said his organization is firmly opposed to any fees coming out of the settlement pot. “We are opposed to lawyers making a profit off these cases,” he said.

As Holocaust victims mark the new year with a sense of triumph, the victory in many cases is tinged with sadness. The fight to reclaim the Swiss bank accounts for these plaintiffs has rekindled old and extremely painful memories.

“You don’t forget,” Wruble said of the years he spent as a prisoner. “When you’re thinking every second that you’re not going to be around, it weakens your heart and the hunger weakens your body.”

Now living in West Los Angeles, the Polish native said there is no way to measure his losses, even though he was hardly wealthy.

“No matter how poor you were, a Jew always had some silverware, a gold watch, a gold ring. We lost everything. I lost my whole family,” Wruble said.

“Even if they give me just one dollar, that would be fine,” he said. “Every survivor should get something, but if some people don’t need it, they should give it to other people who need it so they can live with dignity.”

Weinstein reported from Los Angeles and Goldman reported from New York City.