Simon Wiesenthal to Head Holocaust Reparations Panel

A federal judge in New York announced Wednesday that she had appointed Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi hunter, to head a special committee to decide how to distribute millions of dollars from a controversial settlement of Holocaust era claims against two Austrian banks.

The assignment marks the first time that Wiesenthal, 90, who has lived in Vienna for many years, has had any formal involvement in Holocaust reparations litigation, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

Earlier this year, Bank Austria and its subsidiary CreditAnstalt agreed to pay $40 million to settle claims that the bank aided the Nazi war machine and profited by selling Jewish assets during World War II. U.S. District Judge Shirley W. Kram gave preliminary approval to the settlement in late June.

According to the settlement, whatever is left of the $40 million after the original owners of the stolen assets or their heirs are repaid is to be used for the benefit of Holocaust survivors and the memory of the victims of the Nazi regime.

What to do with that money will be decided by the Wiesenthal committee, subject to the approval of Kram.

The judge talked to Wiesenthal on the phone about the appointment and sent Bank Austria lawyer Charles G. Moerdler of New York and Wiesenthal Center attorney Martin Mendelsohn of Washington to Vienna to discuss his role.

On Monday, the banks are scheduled to launch a worldwide publicity campaign to notify potential beneficiaries of the settlement how to file claims.

However, some Jewish organizations say the deal is financially inadequate and problematic in other ways. Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, said the organization will formally challenge the settlement in court later this year.

Bank Austria has stated that its CreditAnstalt unit came under Nazi control soon after Germany annexed Austria in 1938. However, Steinberg has said bank records show that CreditAnstalt retained independence for part of World War II and therefore bears a greater responsibility than the size of the settlement indicates.

The deal is also opposed by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and Austria, an organization that specializes in Holocaust reparations issues, said Gideon Taylor, the organization’s executive director.

Taylor said he objects to a term of the settlement that would give legal releases to numerous companies in which the banks held stock during World War II, including two firms that used slave laborers.

“This settlement was supposed to be about ‘Aryanization’ of assets by banks; slave labor is another matter entirely,” Taylor said.

Bank sources said they had earlier agreed to take several companies off the release list but maintained that the Jewish organizations have not told them there are firms on the list that used slave labor.

Wiesenthal was not available for comment Wednesday about these matters. He survived several Nazi death camps and after the war set up the Jewish Documentation Center in Austria with the goal of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.

In addition to the committee Wiesenthal is to head, Kram also set up two other panels.

One, a committee of three attorneys headed by Paul D. Wachter, president of a Santa Monica investment firm, will review claims against the banks.

Plaintiffs attorney Robert Swift of Philadelphia said he anticipates 500 to 1,000 valid claims. Bank attorney Moerdler said some claims, including one by a 96-year-old woman living in a nursing home, already have been made. He said Austrian bank secrecy laws prohibit the disclosure of her name.

The other committee will be a group of three respected historians from Europe whom the judge has asked to thoroughly study what the Austrian banks did between 1938 and 1945.