Hungarians Sue U.S. Over Seized Holocaust Loot

A group of Hungarian survivors of Holocaust death camps sued the U.S. government in federal court in Miami on Monday, seeking compensation for property seized from them by Nazis and eventually taken by the U.S. Army but never returned.

The case stems from the Nazi seizure of more than $200 million in gold, jewelry, Oriental rugs, clothing and artworks, among them Rembrandt and Durer paintings. The booty was loaded aboard a train, which the Nazis abandoned and U.S. Army personnel took over. The treasure trove ultimately vanished, a U.S. commission found.

“This is the first case of its type--a class action brought on behalf of Holocaust survivors that charges the U.S. government with improperly disposing of assets,” said Washington attorney Jonathan W. Cuneo, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Until now, the Holocaust-related compensation suits that started in 1996 have primarily been directed against large corporations, primarily banks, industrial companies and insurance firms based in Europe.

Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said the government wouldn’t comment until it has read the suit.

The case, based partly on reports issued in October 1999 and December 2000 by the President’s Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets, dates to late in World War II when the Nazis loaded a train in Hungary with loot seized from Jews who were imprisoned in concentration camps.

The report says the 24-boxcar train never made it to Germany. Eventually, the Nazis abandoned the train in a tunnel about 60 miles from Salzburg, Austria, where American soldiers took control of it. Some of the booty immediately vanished, with the rest being sent to U.S. military warehouses in Austria.

But the treasure continued to dwindle, much of it taken by senior American Army officers, according to the advisory commission reports.

Report Says American Placed Order for Silver

Specifically, the report says that Maj. Gen. Harry J. Collins, the chief U.S. military official in western Austria at the end of the war, placed orders from the warehouse for enough China and silver for 45 people, as well as a dozen silver candlesticks, glassware, 30 sets of table linens, carpets and furs for his villa and a personal railroad car. When Collins requisitioned the material, he commanded that it be “of the very best quality and workmanship available in the land.”

Collins died in 1963 and is buried in Salzburg. Cuneo said that what happened to the goods Collins received remains a mystery.

The Hungarian Jewish community has repeatedly asked that the property be returned, to no avail, the report says. According to a 1994 book, “The Spoils of World War II: The American Military’s Role in the Stealing of Europe’s Treasures,” by Kenneth D. Alford, an American historian, the approximate value of the property on the gold train was $206 million in 1945. Inflation would have driven that value to about $1.95 billion today.

Many of the allegations in the lawsuit track the findings of the advisory commission, which described the incident as a “mysterious” and “egregious” exception to from the normally “outstanding and scrupulous job” U.S. forces did in attempting to return stolen Jewish property to its rightful owners.

In this instance, though, the material was wrongfully classified as “enemy property,” as well as unidentifiable property, enabling the U.S. Army to violate its own rules for the return of property to rightful owners, the suit asserts.

The U.S. allowed some of it to be sold or distributed through outlets of the Army Exchange Service and transferred some of it to an international relief agency that auctioned it off in the U.S. or Europe.

“The U.S. made no attempt to identify the rightful owners of the gold train property; it did not publish any notices in newspapers in Europe, the U.S. or Israel regarding the property, nor did it respond to repeated requests from Hungarian Jewish community organizations for information about the property,” the suit contends.

Among the dozen plaintiffs is Irving Rosner, 78, who was forced to work in a labor camp after the Nazis took him into custody in 1943 in Beregujfalu, Hungary. A year later, according to the suit, Hungarian police raided the home of Rosner’s parents, deported them to Auschwitz and confiscated their textiles.

After being liberated, Rosner returned to Hungary to discover that his parents and other family members had been killed at Auschwitz and that his house “had been turned into a stable for the Germans.” Rosner, who now lives in Florida, “believes it is extremely likely that his family’s possessions were placed on the Hungarian gold train,” according to the suit.

A Long List of Precious Items

Plaintiff Laszlo Sokoly, 74, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Maryland, says in the lawsuit that his parents and 28 other family members died in Auschwitz but that he survived “a death march” to Mauthausen, a concentration camp in northern Austria. He states that in December 1944 Nazi gendarmes took from his home in Szkolyi, Hungary, “many paintings, a Persian coat, five diamond rings including one with a flawless stone, two gold watches, two bracelets, a gold necklace, five Persian rugs, silver service for 18, a Bosendorfer piano, fine China and many other valuable home furnishings.”

The suit claims that the U.S. government, through the actions of military personnel, violated international law and seized property without due process of law. It asks an accounting of all property from the train that the U.S. disposed of and the return of any such property or compensation for it, including interest. Compensation should be distributed equitably among those who can show they had property on the train, the suit says.

Most of the items would be difficult to find or identify, which could hinder the plaintiffs, said Whittier Law School professor Michael Bazyler, who is writing a book on the reparations litigation.

Samuel J. Dubbin of Coral Gables, Fla., an attorney for the plaintiffs, said he thought it was a particularly strong case because “the presidential commission concedes that the rightful owners of much of the property could have been identified and the assets returned.”

But whatever the outcome, the seeming complicity of the U.S. government gives the case an unwanted distinction in the annals of the Holocaust.

“This may be the last chapter of the Holocaust restitution story,” said Bazyler. “This started in U.S. courts against European defendants. Now the finger that was pointed toward Europe is pointed toward the U.S.”