Holocaust payments may be delayed

NEW YORK, Dec. 22 (JTA) — Holocaust survivors may have a longer-than-expected wait before they get their measure of justice.

Sixteen months after Switzerland’s leading banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion in a court-supervised settlement of Holocaust-era claims, it remains unclear whether payments to survivors will be delayed.

Asking Holocaust survivors to be patient would be missing the point: Given their advanced age, any delay could mean that some recipients will not live long enough to get the moneys due them.

On Dec. 28, a court-appointed official, known as a special master, was slated to make his initial recommendation about who should receive money from the $1.25 billion.

In March of this year, U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman, who is overseeing the settlement, appointed Judah Gribetz as the special master and charged him with proposing a plan for allocating and distributing the settlement amount for the court’s review and approval.

But Korman was expected to announce this week that the Dec. 28 allocation hearing would be delayed by about a month. Sources close to the process say the delay may push back a May 30 deadline for a final court decision on how the moneys will be paid out.

They point to three reasons why Korman decided to postpone the hearing:

• The recent release of the Volcker report on dormant Swiss bank accounts from the Holocaust era.

• The release several days later of the Bergier report on Switzerland’s wartime policy toward Jewish refugees.

• The creation last week by Germany and a group of German firms of a $5.2 billion fund for former slave and forced laborers from the Holocaust era.

Gribetz has to take these events into account because many of those expected to receive payments belong to each of these categories.

For example, since slave laborers will not be paid from both funds, Gribetz will have to determine whether the German fund will cover their claims, freeing up moneys from the Swiss fund for other claimants. Any delay in reaching an agreement on who should receive payments from the German fund, therefore, could affect the timetable of the Swiss fund.

Another reason for the delay is the flood of questionnaires received from potential claimants.

As of last month, the court overseeing the Swiss bank settlement has received 479,295 questionnaires from around the world, according to Lisa Leebove, a San Francisco-based lawyer representing Holocaust victims or their heirs. Gribetz will have to get at least a statistical sampling of these forms before making his initial recommendations.

While the tasks facing Gribetz appear daunting, to say the least, there are those who believe that the May 30 deadline for a final distribution plan will not be delayed.

“We’re totally committed to that date,” said Burt Neuborne, the court- appointed settlement counsel. “The money should be in the hands of those who need it.”

Neuborne is also the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the German slave-labor fund, which puts him in a position to monitor how the actions of one fund will affect the other.

He, like others involved in the process, made it clear that he is quite sensitive to the needs of Shoah survivors. But it remains to be seen whether all the complexities involved will inevitably lead to delays beyond their control.

When the first Swiss allocation hearing is held, all eyes will be on Gribetz.

A longtime Jewish activist who formerly served as chairman of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council and the Hebrew Free Loan Society, Gribetz will make his recommendations based on hundreds of proposals and suggestions he received from around the world since his appointment as special master.

Those proposals were submitted by a wide range of parties — including organizations, educational institutions and individual Holocaust survivors.

The Swiss fund is expected to pay the claims of survivors or their heirs, but because some victims of the Holocaust died heirless, some of the organizations are suggesting that moneys from the fund be directed to groups that help Holocaust survivors or perpetuate the memory of the Shoah.

Predictably, many of the organizations that made recommendations to Gribetz came up with competing claims for how the moneys be used, with some suggesting that a portion of the settlement go to causes with which they themselves are involved.

Then there were the recommendations from individual Holocaust survivors.

Among them was one from a woman who identified herself only as Agnes.

“After the claims are paid of those who are able to prove that their family had money deposited in Swiss banks, a fund should be established with the remaining money for the purpose of paying the cost of each and every survivor’s nursing-home care when the time comes that they need it,” she wrote Gribetz.

“This would be much more dignified for us than paying off the sufferings of the victims of the Holocaust with a few hundred dollars each, and giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to institutions which will only take us if we give them our last penny.”

Without doubt, determining how the allocations are made will demand the wisdom of Solomon.