The noisiest dispute is between the World Jewish Congress and New York personal-injury attorney Edward Fagan.
The World Jewish Congress has led the Jewish community’s effort to win moral and monetary restitution from the Swiss banks.
Fagan filed the first of three federal class-action lawsuits against the Swiss banks two years ago. U.S. District Judge Edward Korman eventually combined the three suits.
Fagan has been outspoken in his belief that the survivors — and not the organized Jewish community — should play the key role in determining how the funds will be distributed.
“The organized Jewish world has relegated survivors to second-class citizenship, and that has to stop,” he said last month.
Survivor Gisela Weisshaus, who is part of the lawsuit, agrees. In fact, she wants all the money to go directly to survivors — and none of it to Jewish groups.
But Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, asserts that the Jewish people as a whole are the rightful heirs to much of the money because only a small fraction of the assets can be linked to survivors or living heirs.
Steinberg agrees that none of the money should go into the coffers of Jewish organizations, but said the organized Jewish community has an important role to play in distributing the money.
Meanwhile, lawyers are concerned that differences are percolating publicly when the settlements with the banks are not absolutely final. The Swiss have yet to make the initial $250 million settlement payment.
“Let’s get the money and then we’ll come up with a distribution plan,” said Melvyn Weiss, a New York class-action specialist who has worked closely with the World Jewish Congress. “At least the money will be working for us.”
After the lawyers submit a detailed settlement agreement, Korman is expected to hold hearings to determine if those who have an interest in the settlement see it as fair. The judge will then decide whether to approve the settlement or send the lawyers back to the drawing board.
Eventually, Korman will approve a plan to distribute the funds.
The World Jewish Restitution Organization, which is affiliated with the World Jewish Congress, has yet to finish its distribution proposal.
So far, the WJRO asserts that survivors who had accounts in Swiss banks should receive top priority. The second category could consist of payments to needy survivors who do not have claims on accounts and to organizations that provide social service to survivors. The remaining money, Steinberg said, could go into a memorial foundation to finance education and continuity projects.
Fagan and others are skeptical of this last category, saying the needs of survivors must be paramount.
“Out of simple compassion, we plead that no money be used for memorials, museums or educational projects until all survivor needs are considered,” said John Lemberger, executive director of the Israeli group Amcha — the National Center for Psychological Support of Survivors of the Holocaust and the Second Generation.
Lawyers have been more united on the issues of how the lawyers should get paid and who deserves credit for securing the settlement.
Jewish leaders and Israeli officials such as Bobby Brown, diaspora affairs adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have insisted that the lawyers “should not receive fees for working on the case.”
“Nobody should be profiting from the Holocaust,” Steinberg said.
He maintains that the “case was not won by the lawyers in the courts.” Instead, he asserts, “diplomatic and political leverage” applied on the banks led to the settlement.
But Fagan and the other lawyers scoff at the idea that individuals who have worked on the case for two years should not be compensated in some way beyond expenses, noting that people such as Steinberg make their living working on restitution issues.
At this point, no attorney has applied to the court for costs or fees, said Paula Susi, a top aide to Korman. The judge will ultimately decide on the lawyers’ compensation.
The lawyers also take umbrage at the view that the lawsuits had little impact on winning the settlement.
“If it were not for the impetus of the legal actions and the exposure to the liability which they pose, these talks outside of the legal arena probably would never have occurred, and clearly would not have had the attention that they now enjoy,” said Washington attorney Michael Hausfeld, who, like Weiss, is doing the assets work pro bono.
Some Jewish leaders have begun to express concerns that the haggling will diminish focus on the Holocaust’s victims.
“Jews were killed because they were Jews, not because they had gold teeth, not because they had a Monet, not because they had insurance, not because they had bank accounts,” Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told his members last month at the 85th annual ADL national commission meeting in Boston.
Foxman, a hidden child during the Holocaust, said the effort to recover the assets could be costly, with many people seeing from the media coverage during the last three years that the Holocaust is about money.
“I’m concerned,” he said, “that the last sound bite of this century on the Holocaust will be `Jews and their money, Jews and their property.'”