A Swiss diplomat told an audience of Holocaust survivors Sunday that her country intends “to take responsibility” for its financial dealings with the Nazis during World War II.
About 100 people attended a “town meeting” at the Hebrew Academy in San Francisco’s Richmond District to discuss Holocaust reparations and the role of Swiss banks in accumulating gold plundered by Nazi Germany and bank accounts left behind by Nazi victims.
“We are ready to apologize for those who traded humanity for profits,” said panelist Margrith Ledermann, the Swiss consul in San Francisco.
These charges have “triggered a debate of national dimensions in Switzerland,” she added. “Most Swiss have just recently started to ask questions” about their country’s role in World War II.
Yet Odette Meyers, president of Tikva, an organization of survivors that sponsored Sunday’s meeting and panel discussion, said “reparations is a very sore subject. Nothing would repair our losses.”
But survivors, she added, “should at least have a comfortable old age.”
The gathering focused on a new multimillion-dollar fund the Swiss government has set up to compensate survivors.
Switzerland, like other countries that remained neutral during World War II, had “extremely profitable economic relations” with Germany that significantly prolonged the war, said panelist Martin Primack, professor emeritus of economics at San Jose State University.
Primack cited the same assessment in a recent report by U.S. Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat on Jewish gold and other assets stolen by the Nazis .
The Swiss “knew they were receiving huge amounts of plundered gold,” he said.
After the war Switzerland resisted efforts by the Allies to recover stolen gold, eventually turning over a limited sum, according to the Eizenstat report.
The report also shows that Swiss banks made it extremely difficult for survivors and their relatives to track down bank accounts, Primack said.
While Switzerland accepted 22,000 Jewish refugees, the country turned away another 30,000, Ledermann said.
“This was cruel, fainthearted and inexcusable.”
A total of 285 million Swiss francs (roughly $196 million) has been pledged by Swiss banks to a “humanitarian fund” for needy survivors or their descendants, according to Ledermann.
The fund will be administered by a council of representatives of Jewish and other organizations, and distributions are expected to begin later this summer, she added.
In addition, Ledermann said, the Swiss Bankers’ Association has agreed to search for dormant bank accounts, and to publish a list of the owners of dormant accounts set up before 1945.
“Not one penny” that belongs to survivors or their heirs will remain in Swiss banks, she said.
Some survivors condemned Switzerland’s wartime role.
“Apologizing does not bring back the life of a single person who was not admitted to Switzerland,” said one man.
Two other speakers, however, noted that their relatives found safe haven in Switzerland during the war.
Others expressed anger over the Swiss plan to limit payments to applicants who can show financial need.
Meanwhile, recent applicants for German reparations are being turned away if they do not meet a financial need test, said Eva Maiden, Tikva’s vice president.
The income cutoff for a reparation fund set up after the reunification of Germany is $16,000 for an individual or $21,000 for a couple, according to George Berman, a communications consultant for the Claims Conference, which administers reparations.
The fund is geared toward Eastern European survivors who were not covered by a 1952 reparations agreement, he said.
Irwin Gotfried of Redwood City, who survived Auschwitz and lost eight siblings, said he missed a chance to apply for reparations while he was a young man in the U.S. Army.
“I didn’t care then,” he said. “Now I need the money. They claim I’m making too much money. I’m not.”
Dr. Dora Sorell of San Rafael, a Romanian Jew who survived Auschwitz and now speaks in schools about the Holocaust, said she has received only $2,000 as payment for forced labor.
She left Romania too late to apply for the initial reparations program, declined to file a claim based on emotional disability and, although she speaks German, did not file a claim with a fund intended for German Jews.
Now she is ineligible because she doesn’t meet the income criteria.
“It’s an injustice,” she said.
Several other survivors also criticized the Claims Conference.
“Many survivors have expressed frustration about the bureaucracy and red tape” involved in documenting their claims, said panelist Allie Cannon of the Holocaust Center in San Francisco, which provides survivors with information about reparations.
“Dignity for the applicant and speed are of the essence,” said Maiden. “This is not what has happened with the German reparations.”
Panelists representing community agencies encouraged survivors to contact them for information about reparations, referrals to attorneys trying to recover Swiss bank accounts, and other services for survivors.
They include Cannon of the Holocaust Center, (415) 751-6040; Sheryl Groden of Jewish Family and Children’s Services, (415) 567-8860; and Maiden of Tikva, (415) 855-9800.
Tikva was founded in 1990 by Holocaust survivors “because no one was doing anything about tending to the needs of survivors” as they age, said Meyers.
Other panelists at Sunday’s meeting included Yigal Ben-Haim, a therapist who works with survivors and their children, and spokespeople for California Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo).