JUSTICE - No. 66

13 Spring 2021 in 1992, providing a lifetime pension to those living in western countries, under certain income limits and who had been in camps, ghettos or hiding for a prescribed period of time. Since 2009, we have liberalized the criteria for these pensions by reducing the length of time Jews spent living in ghettos, or in hiding, to make more survivors eligible and by ensuring they include “open ghettos” in several countries. We also changed the income requirements to allow more survivors to receive the pension. These changes resulted in the inclusion of another 18,000 survivors who had not benefited until then. In 1998, a similar pension program, the CEEF (Central and Eastern European Fund) was established in the former communist east bloc countries. Overall, 135,000 survivors have been approved for pensions under the Article 2 and CEEF programs, and in 2020 over 50,000 survivors were still receiving Article 2 and CEEF pensions. The fall of the Berlin wall and reunification of Germany in 1990 led to another novel application of international law. The Claims Conference ensured through German law that former owners and heirs of property located in the former East Germany and which they had lost during the Nazi era were finally given an opportunity for compensation and restitution. This same legislation addressed the issue of unclaimed or heirless Jewish property belonging to whole families that had been wiped out. Using the principles established under U.S. Military Law in the immediate post war period in the U.S. Military Zone of Germany, the 1990 German Property Law declared that the Claims Conference would be designated as the “successor organization” for unclaimed Jewish property located in the former East Germany that had been lost or stolen during the Nazi era. Rather than the property reverting to the German government, the Claims Conference became entitled to file a claim for unclaimed property in the former East Germany, and thus become the legal successor to the property. This resulted in the recovery and sale of $2 billion for the Claims Conference, the vast majority of which has been used since 1995 for welfare programs to assist needy survivors worldwide. The Claims Conference is constantly seeking to enlarge the compensation programs: in 2014 the Child Survivor Fund was created and has paid over 80,000 child survivors a one-time payment of 2,500 euros. In 2018, children who fled Germany and Austria on the Kindertransport were also entitled to a payment from this fund. We have expanded the number of additional groups to benefit from the Hardship Fund. A second unique feature in international law occurred during the Clinton administration, under my leadership: pay-outs by private companies for the harm they had caused to civilians during World War II. The Holocaust was not only the largest genocide in history; it was the largest theft in history, only a small fraction of which has been recovered. After the collapse of communism, Edgar Bronfman, at the time president of the World Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Restitution Organization, met with President Bill Clinton in the White House, to urge that a special envoy be appointed to encourage the newly democratic countries in Central and Eastern Europe to return communal property — synagogues, schools, community centers, even cemeteries — to the shattered Jewish communities seeking to rebuild their communal life after the twin tragedies of the Holocaust and communism. I became that special envoy, taking on a dual role while I was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union in Brussels. I traveled widely throughout the length and breadth of the region to put the moral weight of the U.S. government behind this effort. In the midst of this work, I read a 1995 article in the Wall Street Journal about dormant Swiss bank accounts, accounts that had been opened by Jews seeking to put their assets away from the grasp of the Nazis in the most secure banks in neutral Switzerland. They had never been returned to their rightful owners, and, instead, were incorporated into the profits of the banks – or, as later revealed, had been turned over to the Nazis. I received permission from the State Department to pursue this injustice. When I met with the Swiss Bankers Association in Basel, Switzerland, I showed them the Wall Street Journal article and asked for their response. Yes, they said: there indeed were 730 accounts found after having an ombudsman review the records of all Swiss banks from 1933 to 1945, and we were assured that they were going to pay the owners $30 million, taking into account the interest over the decades. On May 2, 1996, a memorandum of understanding was signed between Edgar Bronfman, the Jewish Agency of Israel, and the Swiss banks with a view to create an independent committee of eminent persons, chaired by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, to conduct an independent audit of the wartime Swiss bank accounts. At the suggestion of the World Jewish Congress,Volcker retained an expert, Helen Junz, to conduct a study of prewar Jewish wealth in Europe, which she estimated at $12.9 billion. After three years