ZURICH (JTA) — Payments from a historic $1.25 billion Swiss bank settlement could be delayed if a Miami lawyer proceeds with his plan to appeal the settlement.

Sam Dubbin, who filed an appeal last Friday, provided Reuters with a copy of a letter he wrote to the judge overseeing the case in which he called the Holocaust survivors' fund "distressingly paltry." A public hearing is slated for Nov. 20, and any appeals could delay the settlement distribution indefinitely.

Meanwhile, copies of the distribution plan were mailed this week to the more than 650,000 people who submitted a questionnaire about the settlement.

Warsaw Shoah exhibit traveling to Frankfurt

BERLIN (JTA) — Nearly 60 years after they were packed in tin boxes and hidden by Polish Jews, the archives of the wartime Warsaw Ghetto are being sent to Germany.

The Ringelblum Archives, organized by historian Emanuel Ringelblum, who died in the Holocaust, will be exhibited at the Frankfurt Jewish Museum starting Sept. 23. They include thousands of personal and official documents chronicling life under harsh Ghetto conditions. The collection was discovered after the war and now forms the core of Warsaw's Jewish Historical Institute.

Meanwhile, at a Warsaw ceremony, Professor Moshe Rosman of Bar-Ilan University was recognized by Poland's Jerzy Milewski Foundation for his scholarly work on the nation's Jewish history. The group will co-sponsor the Polish translation and publication of Rosman's book, "The Lord's Jews."

Mogul's Moscow center riddled with obstacles

MOSCOW (JTA) — A Russian Jewish umbrella group's meeting to lay the cornerstone of a new community center is being postponed until November because of a lack of funds and the inability of the group's leader to attend the meeting, according to sources.

The leader of the Russian Jewish Congress, Vladimir Goussinsky, has been living abroad since he left the country this summer after the Kremlin dropped charges of embezzlement against him.

Meanwhile, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, a rival umbrella group, will inaugurate its Jewish community center Sept. 18.