Panel Considers Holocaust Suit Proposal

Samuel Dubbin, a Miami lawyer, echoed that criticism.

“The insurers profited outrageously from the Holocaust and turned their backs on those who trusted the companies’ supposed integrity,” Dubbin testified. “But this law is also about the truth. And the current system, the status quo represented by the ICHEIC legacy, has permitted the companies to hide behind the secrecy of an unregulated and extra-legal process, chartered in Switzerland and headquartered in London, and make decisions about Holocaust survivors’ rights with no governmental or judicial oversight.”

Critics of the proposed Holocaust-era insurance lawsuit bill said it could undermine efforts to resolve Holocaust-era claims.

“My apprehension regarding H.R. 1746 is that it will not achieve its goal of providing an effective avenue to successfully compensate Holocaust victims and their heirs for unpaid insurance policies,” said Roman Kent, a Holocaust survivor and chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, New York.

Although some survivors may benefit from the bill, its enactment would unduly raise the hopes of many others “that, in the end, will not be met, which will have a profoundly negative impact on survivors,” Kent said.

Stuart Eizenstat, a Washington lawyer and former special representative of the president and secretary of state on Holocaust issues, agreed that opening the court doors to survivors would not necessarily provide them with a reasonable chance for obtaining restitution.

“Litigants would be faced with statutes of limitation, jurisdictional arguments, rules of evidence, and burdens of proof,” Eizenstat said, adding that these cases would involve “considerable costs” that may only be recovered if the claimant wins in both the trial and an appeal.

“Such a cause of action would likely raise the hopes of survivors without offering them a real chance at additional recovery,” Eizenstat said. “But most importantly, litigation would take time — time that survivors on the whole do not have.”

Eizenstat said the bill was also flawed in that it was “at odds” with U.S. policy regarding Holocaust claims, which he noted was based on negotiation.

“It imposes the probability of litigation on companies that have cooperated fully with the United States Government and in the ICHEIC process and that have paid tens of millions of dollars in an effort to satisfy their obligations,” he said.

Thane Rosenbaum a law professor at the Fordham University law school said lawmakers should consider whether the president has a right to value foreign relations more than the rights of citizens.

“The powers of the Executive Branch to conduct foreign policy surely cannot be expanded to allow the suppression of facts in the hands of foreign corporations that collaborated with the Nazis and defrauded its customers,” Rosenbaum said.