PROFILE Mix of Judaism, politics guides Eizenstat in shaping U.S. policy

WASHINGTON, June 10 (JTA) — The gathering was the largest in recent years. Friends came from Europe and from across the United States. They represented every branch of the U.S. government and all branches of Judaism. More than 400 people packed into the State Department”s ornate Roosevelt Room, the biggest crowd to attend a swearing-in ceremony there since the last time Stuart Eizenstat was sworn into a diplomatic post. Using the Bible that belonged to Eizenstat”s father, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer administered the oath of office for his third Senate-confirmed position in the Clinton administration, this time as undersecretary of state for economic, business and agricultural affairs. The gathering last Friday was a fitting tribute to a man who has emerged as one of the most admired figures on the American political scene. Eizenstat, 54, has stepped comfortably and resolutely into the limelight during the past year as the Clinton administration”s point man investigating Nazi Germany”s wartime dealings with Switzerland and other neutral nations. “I knew that in order to try to do justice to this, I had to come at it with the same sort of cold-blooded objectivity that I try to bring to other issues, and that if I didn”t it would impair the credibility of the report,”” Eizenstat said in an interview just prior to his swearing-in ceremony. Last month, he released an exhaustive report on the Nazi gold issue — the product of 11 U.S. government agencies pouring through one million documents over a period of seven months. The task marked the largest declassification of documents and use of archival material in American history. In what may truly be the mark of success in dealing with an issue so complex and incendiary, he has been commended by U.S., Swiss and Jewish officials alike. Surrounded by boxes and bare walls in his office at the Department of Commerce, where he served for the past year as undersecretary for international trade, Eizenstat recalled influences on his contributions to the Jewish people during the course of his more than 20 years in public service. With degrees from Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, Eizenstat has served every Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson. Taking on restitution issues in recent years, he has drawn personal meaning from helping what he calls the “re-emergence of Jewish life out of the ashes of the Holocaust.”” Over the past several years he has served as the Clinton administration”s special envoy on property restitution in Central and Eastern Europe. “I think I was late to come to this,”” Eizenstat said of his focus on Holocaust issues. It wasn”t until the late ”60s, after reading Arthur Morse”s book “While Six Million Died”” that he began to think about and draw lessons from the Roosevelt administration”s failures. He also was influenced profoundly by the teachings of Rabbi Irving Greenberg. Eizenstat recalled attending a federation-sponsored retreat for young couples in the mid ”70s, at which Greenberg, now president of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, spoke for hours about the renewal of Jewish life out of the Holocaust. It was an experience Eizenstat describes as “searing”” and an “early sensitizing event.”” He brought that perspective to the Carter White House, where, serving as the president”s domestic policy chief, he was key to laying the groundwork for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 1979 Eizenstat had a chance to draw directly on the lessons of Jewish history, as tens of thousands of Jews were fleeing Iran after the Islamic revolution. Mindful of the way European Jews were turned away from American shores during World War II, Eizenstat helped persuade Carter to order the Immigration and Naturalization Service to admit some 50,000 Iranian Jews to the United States on temporary visas. Eizenstat has brought a similar mindset to the investigation of Nazi gold, a fact not lost on Benjamin Meed, president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors. Addressing Eizenstat at a recent meeting of Jewish officials discussing the Nazi gold issue, Meed proclaimed: “If you had been in the American government 50 years ago, we would not be sitting around this table today.” American Jewish leaders have spared no superlatives in describing Eizenstat and his recent work. “Stuart Eizenstat is a profile in courage,”” said Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, which has worked closely with Eizenstat over the past year on the Nazi gold probe. “It”s not simply that he took this assignment seriously. He raised it to a level of both public consciousness and governmental involvement that made this issue the singular moral issue of our day.”” Asked if he found it difficult to balance any personal feelings he had as a Jew with the task he was given of dispassionately laying out the facts, Eizenstat said, “I”ve always been able to try to look objectively at issues, obviously shaped to some degree by my background and my interests, but to look at what”s best for the United States of America. “And that”s the way I went into this report. We didn”t have any predetermined outcome.”” Many Jewish leaders have praised Eizenstat for his uncompromising objectivity. “He neither bent over backwards because of his Jewishness, nor did he impose his Jewishness on the issue,”” Steinberg said. “He approached this as a proud American and as the best that this government has to offer.”” At the State Department, Eizenstat will continue to juggle several tasks, continuing his involvement in the Nazi gold issue and in his capacity as special envoy on property restitution. Meanwhile, supporting the Middle East peace process — a task he has worked toward since he assisted President Carter on the Camp David accords — will be one of his “very top priorities.”” “The economic dimension of the peace process is essential, particularly at a time when there”s tension on the political side,”” he said. It is imperative to “show people in the region that peace can be translated into a better way of life.”” In the wake of his report on Nazi gold, Eizenstat has emerged as one of the most sought-after speakers in the Jewish community — a calling he has met with considerable humility. “He”s a class act,”” said Greenberg, a longtime friend of Eizenstat. “He”s very modest and unpossessed, which is one of the reasons people like him so much.”” When Eizenstat came to Washington from Atlanta to serve in the Carter White House, he represented what Greenberg called the “new breed of Jewish civil servant.”” “The previous generation was extremely cautious if not self-denying as Jews,”” Greenberg said. Eizenstat is someone with a deep “inner commitment and security to be a Jew”” who is “not afraid to deal with the Jewish agenda positively.”” A Conservative Jew, Eizenstat left work early on Fridays during his White House days to observe the Sabbath. One year he invited Carter and his wife to the family”s Passover Seder. When they arrived in Brussels in 1993, Eizenstat and his wife, Frances, even made their own bit of Jewish history. As representative to the European Union, Eizenstat was believed to have been the first U.S. ambassador to keep a strictly kosher kitchen on a diplomatic posting. It is just one example of how he has meshed his political and Jewish identities. “The United States is a country which has given me and my community an unparalleled opportunity to live and practice our religion in freedom,”” Eizenstat said at his swearing-in ceremony. “We owe it much in return.”” A man of seemingly boundless energy, Eizenstat looks to the remainder of his career in public service with unpretentious — perhaps even understated — goals, saying he hopes to do his part to make the world a more stable and prosperous place. “One shouldn”t exaggerate the capacity to do that individually,”” he said. “If you can start a small ripple in the pond by making a modest contribution, that”s as much as you can hope to do.””