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The World Jewish Congress this week launched a boycott against San Francisco insurance giant Transamerica.

The boycott was sparked Tuesday when representatives for Transamerica's parent company, Dutch insurer Aegon NV, met with the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims but once again did not join it.

"The struggle against Transamerica and Aegon has begun," Elan Steinberg, executive director of the WJC, said Wednesday by phone from New York. "As to whether or not it will succeed, I would quote the Talmud: It's not as important to succeed as it is to try."

Transamerica, which employs about 400 people in the Bay Area and is headquartered in San Francisco's landmark pyramid building, was taken over by Aegon in July in a deal worth almost $10 billion.

An Aegon spokesperson stressed Wednesday that Aegon "did not refuse to join" the commission.

"We're continuing to try to work it out with the international commission," she added. "Talks are proceeding."

The boycott will be addressed in depth next month in the WJC newsletter Dateline World Jewry, sent to about 200,000 WJC members in North America. Additionally, a letter outlining the boycott will be sent to the same people by the end of February.

Steinberg is also preparing public information and media campaigns, including advertisements in major financial and other newspapers.

He will inform the WJC's international executive committee of the boycott at a meeting next week in Stockholm, which will be attended by 250 members from 80 countries.

"Our effort here is to go beyond a simple boycott," Steinberg said. "We want to educate the world as to the role of Holland and the shameful record of Holland during the Holocaust."

Steinberg, whose organization seeks to secure the rights and interests of Jews worldwide, said the issue is bigger than just Aegon refusing to join the commission, which is trying to resolve World War II-era insurance claims on behalf of Holocaust victims, survivors and their families.

"It is also bound in the attempt [of Holland] not to confront its past," he said. "It's part of their effort to try and portray a benevolent image of an occupied country that did what it could to help the Jews — which simply is not true."

Holocaust survivor William J. Lowenberg, a San Francisco real estate developer who grew up in Holland, said Holland had the worst record of survival in Western Europe for Jews during the Holocaust. Approximately 125,000 of Holland's 150,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis, he said.

"The Dutch were good before the war because there was no anti-Semitism," he said Wednesday. "But they were scared by the Germans because the Germans were so brutal. They tried to hide some people, but they lost a lot of people, too."

Discussing the boycott, Steinberg said WJC will begin by asking potential insurance customers not to purchase Transamerica policies.

It will then target public finance officers, who control large chunks of government money, and ask them to steer clear of Transamerica, which is engaged in commercial lending and other financial services.

Also, the WJC might ask municipalities, foundations and other institutions to divest their portfolios of Aegon stock, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is the world's seventh biggest insurer (measured in terms of assets).

"I have no doubt that this is going to be a very long struggle," Steinberg said. "If I were to estimate, I'd say it will be a two-year struggle."

Steinberg said the WJC will not insist that people drop Transamerica policies that they already own.

"We're advising caution in that regard because it might be difficult in getting a replacement policy or one at the same level," he said. "We don't want to harm the consumer. No one should cancel unless carefully checking their options first."

Steinberg is a big believer of applying economic pressure in Holocaust-era gambits. Swiss banks, he noted, reached a $1.25 billion settlement on dormant accounts shortly after a threat of sanctions was made in 1998 by a bevy of state finance officers, including California Treasurer Phil Angelides.

Also, Steinberg said, German insurer Allianz AG three months ago agreed to turn over some records to the international commission only after the threat of a boycott.

The boycott against Transamerica was launched after representatives of Aegon refused to sign a memorandum of understanding in a Washington, D.C., meeting Tuesday with the top brass of the international commission, Chairman Lawrence Eagleburger and Chief of Staff Neil Sher.

Aegon USA was represented by Patrick Baird, its chief operating officer, and Don Shepard, president and CEO.

According to Steinberg, who wasn't at that meeting but talked to Sher afterward, Baird and Shepard pointed to Aegon's participation in a $21.2 million resolution in Holland and an agreement with California as signs of their good will.

Aegon and two other Dutch insurers have told a commission here that they will adhere to a new California law by turning over European policyholder information from 1920 to 1945 to state officials by April 6. The three companies will also provide a total of $4.2 million to a fund for the state's 22,000 Holocaust survivors.

To Steinberg, holding up that fund as a sign of compassion and compliance is a joke because "it excludes 97 percent of the world's Holocaust victims. It's as if they're telling all the other victims and survivors to go jump in the lake."

Transamerica's office in San Francisco referred calls to Aegon USA in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where a spokesperson said of the World Jewish Congress, "They are not members of the international commission and they do not speak on behalf of the international commission."

Baird and Shepard, who works out of Aegon's Baltimore office, failed to return phone calls Wednesday.

Baird told the San Francisco Examiner last month that his company was trying to do what is right for its policyholders and shareholders, and that regarding "this issue, with all its emotion and all its history, it's not possible to make all parties happy."

Steinberg said the stance of Baird and Shepard at Tuesday's meeting showed that "Transamerica is effectively a Dutch company" because Aegon USA executives had no authority to act on their own.

"They gave new meaning to the term 'Dutch masters,'" Steinberg said of the two Aegon USA officials. "They had neither the authorization nor the power from their Dutch masters to join the commission. They were very clearly acting as the cat's paw for their Dutch masters."