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http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/index.html]

Norman Finkelstein

Analysis of the Presidential Commission's report
on Holocaust Assets

In May 1998 a Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets was charged by Congress with "conducting original research on the fate of assets taken from victims of the Holocaust that came into the possession of the U.S. Federal government" and "advising the President on policies that should be adopted to make restitution to the rightful owners of stolen property or their heirs1." In December 2000 the Commission, chaired by Edgar Bronfman (who orchestrated the assault on the Swiss banks), released the long-awaited report. Entitled Plunder and Restitution: The U.S. and Holocaust Victims' Assets2,(2) it purports to demonstrate that "the United States has asked of itself no less than it has asked of the international community3."(In fact, a close reading of the document points to the opposite conclusion: although the United States was culpable of all the offenses it alleged against the Swiss, no comparable demands have been imposed on the U.S. for Holocaust restitution4.
The Presidential Commission juxtaposes the "intransigence of the Swiss banks" against the "extraordinary efforts" of the United States to return Holocaust-era assets5. I want first to compare the charges leveled against the Swiss with the American record as revealed in the Commission report.
Denial of access to Holocaust-era assets
The Holocaust industry alleged that the Swiss banks systematically denied Holocaust survivors and heirs access to their accounts after World War II. The Volcker Committee concluded that, apart from marginal exceptions, the charge lacked merit6. On the other hand, the Presidential Commission found that after the war "many" Holocaust survivors and heirs couldn't recover their assets in the United States due to the "expense and difficulty in filing" a claim. (From 1941 the Federal government had blocked or vested the assets of all nationals from Nazi-occupied countries.)7 As with the Swiss banks, in "some instances" the federal government sought out rightful owners8.

Destruction of Holocaust-era asset records

The Holocaust industry alleged that, to cover their tracks, the Swiss banks systematically destroyed essential records. The Volcker Committee concluded that the charge lacked merit9.
On the other hand, the United States did destroy crucial "raw data." After the U.S. declared war, the Treasury Department required American financial institutions to submit detailed descriptions of all foreign-owned assets on deposit. The Commission reports that these forms - fully 565,000 - "have been destroyed, and the staff's investigations have uncovered no duplicates.
As a result, it is not possible to estimate the amount of victims' assets in the United States in1941." The Commission is strangely silent on when or why these documents were destroyed10..
Misappropriation of Holocaust-era assets
The Holocaust industry justly accused Switzerland of using monies belonging to Holocaust victims from Poland and Hungary as compensation for Swiss properties nationalized by these governments11. Yet, the Presidential Commission reports this happened in the United States as well: "[C]ompensation for U.S. assets lost in Europe took precedence over compensation for foreign-owned assets frozen in the United States. Congress regarded frozen German assets as a source from which to pay U.S. war claims for damages suffered by American businesses and individuals....Thus, U.S. war claims were paid in part by German assets that likely included victims' assets12."(12)
Trading in looted Nazi gold The Holocaust industry justly accused the Swiss of purchasing Nazi gold looted from the central treasuries of Europe13. Yet, the Presidential Commission reports the United States did so as well. In fact, trading in looted Nazi gold was official U.S. policy until Germany's declaration of war precluded the practice. The relevant passage from the Commission report merits extended quotation:
The German invasion of France, Belgium and the Netherlands in May of 1940, prompted Mr. Pinsent, Financial Counselor at the British Embassy, to send a note to the Treasury Department to inquire of Mr Morgenthau [Treasury Secretary] "whether he would be prepared to scrutinize the gold imports with a view to rejecting those suspected of German origin," as Pinsent explicitly feared that the private hoards of Dutch and Belgian gold might fall into German hands. In a June 4, 1940 memo, Harry Dexter White [head of the Division of Monetary Research] explained why the U.S. Treasury did not raise questions about the origin of "German" gold....The most effective contribution the United States could make to keep gold as an international exchange medium, White argued, "is to maintain its inviolability and the unquestioned acceptance of gold as a means of settling international balances." Indeed, six months later White would scornfully write of his "adamant opposition to give even serious consideration to proposals from those who know little of the subject that we stop purchasing gold, or that we stop buying the gold of any particular country, for this or for that or for any particular reason." In early 1941, White was asked again, through an internal Treasury memorandum, to consider the question "whose gold are we buying?" but from his memos it is clear that the answer was an "unquestioned acceptance of gold14."
The Holocaust industry also justly alleged that the Swiss purchased Nazi gold looted from Holocaust victims. (There was no evidence, however, that the Swiss knowingly purchased this "victim gold;" its total worth in current values was put at about a million dollars.)15 The Presidential Commission similarly reports that "it is possible that gold bars and coins purchased by the Department of Treasury through the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, during and after the war contained trace amounts of gold items looted from victims of Nazism16."
In sum, the Presidential Commission's report demonstrates that the United States was guilty of all the charges leveled by the Holocaust industry against Switzerland.
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The Holocaust industry forced the Swiss banks to conduct an exhaustive, external audit costing a half billion dollars in order to locate all unclaimed Holocaust-era assets. Before this audit was even completed, the Holocaust industry forced a $1.25 billion settlement on the Swiss17. Yet, the Volcker Committee reported that, alongside Switzerland, the United States was also a primary safe haven for Jewish assets in Europe18. Compare now the demands imposed on the U.S.
As noted above, the Presidential Commission claimed that its "work...demonstrates that the United States has asked of itself no less than it has asked of the international community." The Commission did not, however, undertake a comprehensive accounting of unclaimed Holocaust-era assets in the U.S. The report maintains that it wasn't the Commission's mandate "to mechanistically quantify or assign dollar values to perceived historical shortcomings in U.S. policy making or implementation19." Indeed, it supposedly couldn't do so due to the "necessary compromise between research goals and the time and resources available to complete them," and the "paucity and uneven quality of documentation at its disposal20." Inexplicably, Switzerland could, but the United States couldn't, finesse these obstacles. (What prevented a greater allocation of "time and resources," or a Swiss-style audit to fill the document gap?)21
Likewise, an accurate reckoning of returned Holocaust-era assets would have required "systematic investigations that fell beyond the capacities"22 of the Commission - but not beyond the capacities of the Swiss banks.
The Commission reports that the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO) only "reluctantly accepted" the $500,000 compensation offered by the US government for unclaimed Holocaust-era assets23. Although the report findings support Seymour Rubin's contention that the $500,000 figure was "very low,"24 the Commission predictably concludes that the measly compensation wasn't "attributable to bad motives on the part of any official, agent or institution of the United States25." The report never once proposes that the U.S. should pay more compensation, let alone of a magnitude comparable to the $1.25 billion extracted from the Swiss.
The Presidential Commission includes a list of noble recommendations26.(26) At war's end, American GIs stationed in Europe engaged in massive looting27. One recommendation calls on the federal government "to develop, in concert with veterans' service organizations, a program to promote the voluntary return of victims' assets that may have been taken by former members of the armed forces as war souvenirs." No doubt veterans are already queuing up to return the booty. A final recommendation calls on the United States to "continue its leadership to promote the international community's commitment to addressing asset restitution issues." After this report who can question American leadership?

Norman G. Finkelstein
June 2001

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