Vowing to “do everything in my power to bring this to a conclusion,” California Treasurer Phil Angelides had good news and bad news for an audience of several dozen Holocaust survivors on Thursday of last week.
In a speech at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, Angelides said reparations negotiations with Germany are moving along nicely, but that dealings with France and Austria are lagging.
“That we’re still talking about restitution 60 years after the invasion of Poland is an abomination,” said Angelides, who serves on a national committee of state financial officers keeping tabs on issues of Holocaust reparations and restitution.
The nine-member Executive Monitoring Committee held a meeting in New York two weeks ago to review progress in various negotiations around the world to settle the claims of victims of Nazi atrocities or their heirs.
The panel was instrumental in pressing Swiss banks to reach a $1.25 billion settlement with survivor groups in 1998.
Angelides reminded those in the audience that the deadline for filing to be part of that class-action lawsuit is Oct. 22.
He said the financial muscle of California was a big factor in the Swiss settlement, adding that he’s ready to flex that muscle again if necessary to get restitution from banks in France and Austria and from banks and industry in Germany.
For example, a study by Angelides’ staff in April showed that California had approximately $4 billion invested in foreign banks and other institutions from which reparations were being sought.
The threat to remove that money — invested from the retirement funds of California public employees and teachers — should motivate the French, Germans and Austrians to comply, Angelides said.
“It is a powerful weapon if used at the right moment. Human nature is to pull the trigger on these sanctions right now, but the World Jewish Congress has asked us [Executive Monitoring Committee] to work with them to use the sanctions as a weapon at the right time.”
The Austrian and French negotiations are the most difficult right now, Angelides said.
Austrian banks are offering a settlement of $38 million, a figure at which attorneys are scoffing.
“I know a lawyer who has one client whose personal claim is verifiably over $30 million,” Angelides said.
Deciphering what the Austrian liability should be has led to sticky negotiations. There is also much contention about who was actually in control of Austrian banks just before German occupation.
The World Jewish Congress has estimated the French banks’ liability at a minimum of $5 billion.
Not only are French bank officials upset that the WJC is trying to dictate what their liability is, but they are insisting on handling the matter without international guidance, Angelides said.
“They want to give the money to the current French Jewish community. But that’s an entirely different population” from the Jews who deposited money into French banks around the time of the Holocaust.
Angelides said the negotiations with German banks and businesses are proceeding well. The number of German companies signed up to make reparations has increased from 13 to 35 in the past few months, he said.
The panel has been encouraged by the attitude of the German government and the German business community to make full restitution, Angelides said.
His speech at Emanu-El, attended by about 80 people, was his second in a series of meetings to bring people up to speed on the status of negotiations. The meeting was organized by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council and the Holocaust Center of Northern California.
Angelides spoke recently in Los Angeles; his staff is working to put together a meeting in San Jose and another in San Francisco specifically for Jewish emigres.
Survivors, their heirs and the relatives of those who perished are seeking to recover money that was shuttled into French and Austrian banks in the late 1930s and early 1940s. They are also seeking to retrieve funds from German banks, as well as money from German companies that used slave labor during World War II.
In the Swiss settlement, four categories of people or their heirs are eligible to join the class-action lawsuit: anyone who toiled in a Nazi labor camp for a company that made deposits into a Swiss bank; anyone who sought refugee status in Switzerland but was denied; anyone whose house was looted, with the assets winding up in Switzerland; and anyone whose family had deposited money into a Swiss bank.
“We need to bring about a fair resolution to issues that have gone on far too long and scarred our history,” Angelides said.