AAARGH
1.For background, see Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry (New York: 2000), 119. (Hereafter: HI) The commission was formed at the peak of U.S. pressures on the Swiss banks and in the face of Swiss criticism that the U.S. was itself not blameless in the matter of Holocaust compensation .
2. Washington,
DC. (Hereafter: P&R) It is divided into two parts: "Findings
and Recommendations," and "Staff Report". Page
numbers for the Staff Report are denoted "SR" .
4. It bears passing notice that this report is replete with the hyperbole typical of Holocaust industry publications. Thus the Holocaust is deemed "the greatest mass theft in history." (P&R: SR-3) The entire United State s was built on land stolen from the indigenous population, and U.S. industria l development was fueled by centuries of unpaid labor of African-Americans in the cotton industry: Did the Commission reckon these thefts in its calculations ?
7. P&R: 11-12; SR-167-8. The report also observes: "No noticeable relaxation of the rules or procedures facilitated victims' claims....Heirs faced more challenges than named account holders. Many case histories demonstrated that the initial claimant died during the claim process. In those cases,...further investigations...delayed cases."
8. P&R: SR-170. See HI: 111-2.
10. P&R:
SR-4, SR-213-14.
11.
See HI: 97-8.
12.
P&R, 12; SR-6, SR-170.
17. For details, see HI: 89-120 passim.
21. The Commission merely conducted a "pilot project matching the names of a limited list of Holocaust victims with a list of escheated property maintained by the State of New York...This procedure...yielded 18 matches of names of victims with dormant bank accounts in the State of New York...the value of these accounts ranges from a few dollars to five thousand dollars."
(Under the doctrine of escheat, American banks are supposed to transfer abandoned dormant accounts to the respective state government.) In addition, the Commission reached an agreement with major banks "defining suggested best practices to be used by banks when they search for Holocaust assets." Under this accord, banks volunteering to participate are supposed to conduct "their own investigations" of relevant records, and inform state officials of any Holocaust-era dormant accounts found. Not only does an abyss separate these "suggested best practices" from the exhaustive, external audit imposed on the Swiss banks, but the agreement explicitly provides that cooperating banks don't have to publicly report "the identity of the account holder" for "any accounts identified." (P&R: 3, 15-17)
23. P&R: SR-138. The JRSO was responsible for recovering heirless Holocaust-era assets after the war. Interestingly, the Commission reports that the JRSO claimed for itself property belonging to Holocaust survivors and their heirs:
Individuals sometimes discovered that the JRSO had submitted a claim for their property and they then turned to the successor organization for restitution; the JRSO handled over 4,800 such claims by 1955. After internal discussion, the JRSO agreed to restitute property to such claimants even though it had obtained title to such assets....It did, however, assess a service charge to the late petitioners to covers its costs. The fees depended on the relationship of the claimant to the former owner and the appraisal of the property. If the JRSO had actually recovered a property, a surcharge of ten percent augmented these costs (although the organization reduced this to five percent if a claimant was indigent). One claimant sharply criticized US authorities for "awarding" her property to the JRSO. She argued that she had not heard about the filing deadline until after it had passed, and instead discovered that, "I shall be punished because the Occupation Army, for whom my husband and I pay plenty, deems it right to take my property and gives it to who knows whom." The frustration and anger expressed in this letter likely mirrored the sentiments of other claimants who missed the deadline; individuals hurled "demands" and "protests" at the JRSO for the immediate return of their property. (P&R: SR-156)
A half century later the Jewish Claims Conference (successor to the JRSO) pursues the identical strategy to rob legitimate Jewish heirs of their properties in the former East Germany (see references cited HI: 87n11, and Netty Gross, "Time's Running Out," in Jerusalem Report (7 May 2001).
24. P&R: SR-171. The quoted phrase comes from a statement by Seymour Rubin in 1959 (for Rubin, see HI: 115-16). The JRSO ultimately acceded to this figure, according to Rubin, because Holocaust survivors were approaching death: "time is running out for these people." Yet during the Swiss shakedown, the Holocaust industry was still playing the "time is running out" tune (see HI: 107). One might have thought that a half century later time had already run out. For suggestive evidence that the total value of unclaimed Holocaust-era assets ran much higher, see P&R: SR-6, SR-166-7, SR-172, SR-214-5.