Opening Statements

Opening Ceremony Remarks at the

United States

Holocaust Memorial Museum

Mr. Miles Lerman

CHAIRMAN, UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST

MEMORIAL COUNCIL

UNITED STATES

It is proper and most fitting that this conference began with a

symbolic ceremony of silent contemplation in the Hall of Remembrance

of the Holocaust Memorial Museum where we invoked memory and paid

tribute to those who were consumed in the Nazi inferno.

Now let me welcome you to the Washington Conference on

Holocaust-Era Assets. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

is pleased to co-chair with the State Department this historic event.

For the next three days representatives of 44 countries will have

the opportunity to explore a just and orderly return of confiscated assets

to their rightful owners.

It took over 50 years for the world to come to grips with the fact

that the biggest murder of the century; it was also, as my friend Ben

Meed reminds us, the biggest robbery in history.

This fact is not limited to one country only. What really shocked

the conscience of the world was the discovery that even after the war,

some countries tried to gain materially from this cataclysm by refusing to

return to the rightful owners what was justly theirs. The refusal to

respond to these rightful claims was a great injustice, a moral wrong

which can not be ignored.

And this is what brings us together today.

We are here to make sure that these wrongs are corrected in a

just and proper manner.
4 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Under Secretary Eizenstat and Edgar Bronfman deserve our

gratitude for their unrelenting efforts to bring about full accountability

for all wrongs that must be made right.

Among us are countries that on their own volition began this

process. These countries are to be complimented for setting the right

examples.

The issue of Nazi-era assets is very complex. It will require a

thorough research of archival data of the countries involved. Some of

these archival repositories are still inaccessible. This is a major obstacle

to the discovery process, which we must overcome.

We, at the Holocaust Museum, have made strides in the area. We

have gained access to many archival repositories and we hope to be

helpful in the discovery process. However, we as a group must use our

collective influence to obtain unrestricted access to all archival

repositories of this period.

Only then will we be able to resolve the outstanding issues

judiciously.

A lot of progress has been made. The agreement which the

World Jewish Congress has negotiated with Swiss banks is a step in the

right direction.

It is clear that survivors can never be compensated for their

decimated families and destroyed lives. They are, however, entitled to a

full accounting of all the assets that were confiscated from them or their

families. For this, they must be fully compensated.

However, as imperative as the financial settlements are, it is

important to bear in mind that the last word on the Holocaust cannot be

gold or bank accounts.

The final objective must be remembrance. The lessons of the

Holocaust must continue to serve as a reminder and a warning to you, to

me and to future generations that will follow.

This is why this conference has decided to deal with ongoing

Holocaust education extensively.

Some countries have begun various educational programs and

we applaud them for there efforts. However, we must aim to create a

global network of Holocaust education that would be both general and

country specific.

We at the Holocaust Museum have substantial experience in this

field. We work annually with 30,000 teachers on all levels, representing

many disciplines. Should this conference endorse an international

Holocaust education initiative, we at the Holocaust Museum stand ready
OPENING STATEMENTS 5

to assist you in any necessary form to make sure that such efforts are

fruitful and productive.

I am sure that Yad Vashem, who has vast experience in this

field, would be ready to do the same.

Secretary Eizenstat, Judge Abner Mikva, the chairman of this

conference, and I are looking forward to working with you to make sure

that the next 3 days move us ahead with our goals and objectives and we

return to our respective homes with a sense of tangible accomplishments.

The memory of the victims demands no less.

Thank you very much.

And now I have the honor to introduce to you a man who has

made an enormous effort to make this conference happen.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Under Secretary of

State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, Stuart Eizenstat.

Opening Ceremony Remarks at the

United States

Holocaust Memorial Museum

Stuart E. Eizenstat

UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ECONOMIC,

BUSINESS AND AGRICULTURAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES

Chairman Lerman, Members of Congress, Elie Wiesel, national

delegations, ladies and gentleman: It is a great honor and privilege to

address you this evening, here at this American national treasure – the

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

More than five and a half years ago, when President Clinton

dedicated this living memorial, he said: "This museum is not for the dead

alone, nor even for the survivors who have been so beautifully

represented; it is perhaps most of all for those of us who were not there at

all, to learn the lessons, to deepen our memories and our humanity, and

to transmit those lessons from generation to generation."

As we join together this evening, those eloquent words echo

throughout this solemn space. Before I continue, let me pay tribute to my

old and dear friend Miles Lerman for both his tireless leadership of this

institution and for his willingness to join with me as the co-Chairman of

the Washington Conference on Holocaust-era Assets.

In addition, it is a particular honor to be standing with another

friend, Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. His remarkable bearing of

personal witness to the seemingly unimaginable horror of the Holocaust

has shed eternal light on the darkness of that unique tragedy, By doing

so, he has brought its enduring lessons to a worldwide audience and

through his literature has ensured that his witness is an enduring gift to

humanity.

The Washington Conference, like the London Nazi Gold

Conference, of one year ago, promises to be a landmark event. It may
8 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

well represent the last full opportunity for the international community to

gather and write the final chapter in the unfinished business of perhaps

the greatest human tragedy of this or any other century. It is yet another

of this century's innumerable and seemingly endless tragedies that for

nearly fifty years the fate of assets seized during the Holocaust remained

largely undiscovered and uninvestigated.

For those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis; for those who

lost entire families; for those who survived the Holocaust only to then

fall under the iron fist of Communism; for those who have endured years

of poverty and misery because of the world's neglect Slid failure; for

those whose lives and deaths are poignantly memorialized in this

museum: Our efforts to bring justice are done with a heavy heart and the

knowledge that in so many ways, our work comes too late.

For those who, against unimaginable odds, are still alive today,

our work must be guided by an urgent resolve to ensure that those who

survived the tragedy of the Holocaust will not continue to suffer in

poverty and fear.

For those who perished, our efforts must be galvanized by an

unrelenting aspiration to uncover the truth and to seek justice for both the

living and the dead.

Only then can we provide a last – albeit inadequate – measure of

justice for those who died. As painful as it may sometimes be, we must

not sweep these issues under the rug of embarrassment, silence and

indifference.

The often traumatic efforts over the past several years of so

many countries and institutions to come to terms with their conduct

during World War II – however overdue – is nonetheless inspiring. The

international community, at last, shares a common interest in the quest

for justice and the search for truth.

Through our effort, we are together building lasting bridges

between yesterday and today; between brutality and humanity; between

searing history and enduring memory; between tragedy and rebirth;

between darkness and light.

While turning the page on this black chapter of history, we must

take from the lessons of yesterday a renewed commitment to usher in a

new and brighter century. Our words must provide enduring lessons from

this awful experience, guiding all our countries to act with a greater

sensitivity to present and future crimes against humanity, even if on a

different scale.

Only then will we know if our efforts have had a practical

impact. Teaching future generations about the Holocaust and, the theft of
OPENING STATEMENTS 9

assets will be essential lessons, in all our countries, for future citizens

that may see these events as only ancient history.

The sheer presence of this museum – in the Capitol of the

world's greatest bastion for democracy – will for generations to come

perform the essential task of further educating all peoples about the

horrors and the lessons of the Holocaust.

It must remain the abiding responsibility of future generations to

ensure that the memory of those who perished at the hands of the Nazis

is seared in the collective memory of the world's conscience.

As we make this journey together into a world of greater justice

and humanity, where the dignity of each individual is upheld, I am

reminded of the passage in Psalms, which says that "the path of the just

is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."

By undertaking a moral accounting, by completing the historical

record, by providing restitution, by educating future generations, by

righting the wrongs of the past and finally by seeking justice for the

living and for the dead, we can walk together in the path to that “ perfect

day."

Thank you.

Opening Ceremony Remarks

at the United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum

The Honorable Abner J. Mikva

CONFERENCE CHAIRMAN

Chairman Lerman, Stu, members of Congress, distinguished

guests and delegates. As I placed the rose in front of the eternal flame

tonight, I thought how appropriate it is that before we begin the work of

the Conference, we remember those who lived, suffered, died or survived

through the unique horrors of the Holocaust. Surrounded as we are here

at this museum by solemn reminders of these horrors, and joined as we

are by a few people who miraculously survived them, I am struck by the

powerful role the past still plays in the present. Over half a century later,

the international community shares a responsibility to acknowledge this

still contemporary history, to absorb its terrors, preserve the memory of

and- provide some small measure of justice to its survivors before it is

too late.

By presenting the history of the Holocaust era, painful as it may

be, this wonderful museum honors those who suffered, reminds us of our

responsibility and educates us on our need to be ever vigilant in our

respect for human rights for all groups in order to avoid the terrible

consequences of prejudice, intolerance, and hatred.

With the memory of this tragic legacy so vividly before us, let us

come together over the next three days with a common goal to tackle

these difficult issues openly and constructively. Let us seek solutions

while we contribute to a clearer understanding of the historical record.

Let us leave behind our own legacy of healing and restitution.

I would like to introduce Elie Wiesel, author, crusader for justice

and Nobel Laureate, whose life-long commitment to bearing witness to

the Holocaust will itself burn as an eternal flame against darkness

everywhere.

Opening Ceremony Remarks

at the United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum

Elie Wiesel

FOUNDING CHAIRMAN, UNITED STATES

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL COUNCIL

AND NOBEL LAUREATE

Judge Mikva, Stuart Eizenstat, Chairman Lerman, distinguished

members of Congress, my good friends.

As you are about to begin a three-day introspection of your

national psyche, may I first ask a few questions. Why so late? Why only

now? Why this sudden concern for stolen money and fortunes? Why has

it taken so long in fulfilling the biblical command that stolen property

must be returned to its owners? Why is it that it took an Edgar Bronfman,

Stu Eizenstat, Israel Singer, Elan Steinberg? The group is so small. Why

is it that all of a sudden things became apparent, thanks to these few

people? Where were the others?

Permit me to express my hope that we have not come here to

speak about money. We have come here to speak about conscience,

morality and memory. Usually, anti-Semites say about us Jews that we

speak about lofty things, but we mean money. Just the opposite. Here, we

speak about money, but we think of other things. The man who speaks to

you belongs to a traumatized generation which is still oscillating between

anger and gratitude. Gratitude for what we owe our friends, and anger at

those, who, in our times of distress and solitude, have withdrawn into

comfortable indifference.

Inspired by moral rather than financial concerns, this conference

in this place which is so particular, so important, so essential to our

national survival as human beings everywhere, this conference is
14 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

important because it illustrates and perhaps embodies an irresistible quest

for both justice, as Stuart said, and compassion, as you have said.

But why now? Why is it taking place at such a late date under

the moral pressure of public opinion? These questions face us when we

deal with the issues that motivated these meetings. You know that.

More than fifty-odd years have elapsed since the Allied victory

over Nazism and Fascism uncovered the horrors of Auschwitz, Majdanek

and Treblinka. Innumerable testimonies have been published, witnesses

interrogated, widely-publicized trials held, criminals prosecuted, and in

some cases, punished.

Political scientists, psychologists, philosophers, essayists,

psychiatrists and theologians have done much research on what

happened in those years of malediction, in the darkest of all kingdoms.

Here and there, people wanted to know everything about all

aspects of what we so poorly call the Holocaust. Yet, somehow, its

simple economic aspect seems to have been utterly neglected.

Why? Is it that we all felt the memory of the tragedy to be so

sacred that we preferred not to talk about its concrete, financial and

material implications? Or is it that the task of protecting that memory

was so noble, so painful, but so urgent that we simply felt it undignified

to think of anything else – and surely not of bank accounts? In truth, we

feel reticent to talk about it even now.

Is it that intellectually and morally we could not accept the

possibility that the Holocaust was for the killers a combination of both

perverse, hate-filled idealism and convenient, cheap robbery?

There may have been another reason as well. In those years,

survivors had more urgent problems to solve than to demand restitution.

They had to adjust to freedom, life and death – normal death. Their

tragedy did not end with the end of the war. It continued long after. On

ruins, and haunted by invisible cemeteries, they had to rebuild hope and

faith. Those who wanted to go to Palestine could not get British

certificates and had to go there illegally. Some returned to their homes

and were met by open hostility.

My sister Beatrice went back to Sighet hoping to find me there.

Our house was occupied by strangers. In certain cities and villages, local

people greeted their former Jewish neighbors with scorn, "What, you are

not dead?” and chased them away. So, many left everything behind and

went to stay in D.P. camps in Germany and Austria, where they were

treated with no special consideration.

Listen to excerpts from a report by The New York Times, dated

September 30th, 1945.
OPENING STATEMENTS 15

"President Truman has directed General Eisenhower to clean up

alleged shocking conditions in the treatment of displaced Jews in

Germany outside the Russian Zone and in Austria.” The report declared

that "displaced Jews were held behind barbed wire in camps guarded by

our men, camps in which frequently, conditions were unsanitary and the

food poor and insufficient. With our military more concerned with other

matters, some of the displaced Jews were sick and without adequate

medicine," the report stated, "and many had to wear prison garb, or to

their chagrin, German SS uniforms. All were wondering," it was added,

"if they had been liberated after all, and were despairing of help while

worrying about the fate of relatives.”

They were, in many cases, the report said, "behind barbed wire

in camps formerly used by the Germans for their prisoners, including the

notorious Bergen-Belsen camp. Nearly all had lost hope," he stated. “The

Germans in rural areas whom the Jews look out upon from the camps

were better fed, better clothed, and better housed than the" quote,

‘liberated’ unquote, Jews, the report declared.

And the report noted – remember, a few months after liberation –

“As matters now stand, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis

treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in

concentration camps, in large numbers under our own military guard

instead of S.S. troops. One wonders whether the German people, seeing

this, are not supposing that we are following or at least condoning the

Nazi policy."

And you would expect these refugees, uprooted human beings,

to organize immensely complex legal mechanisms capable of obtaining

from banks, museums and governments the restitution of what had been

theirs? They were treated everywhere as poor cousins, at best. They were

not even asked to play a role in the early negotiations with Germany in

1953.

In truth, the search for the missing monies, apartments and

collections of art should have been initiated long ago and more elegantly,

with a greater measure of grace – by banks and governments themselves.

And I speak of neutral countries, as well as of countries which had been

occupied by the Germans.

Now we know that some did that, some were gracious – but for

the wrong reasons. More precisely, for the benefit of the wrong people.

Almost under duress, efforts were being made to ask for the restitution of

what had been stolen. In some places, because Jews had asked for the

restitution, a new wave of anti-Semitism swept the country. The

prophet's outcry to the king, “Haraz-tachta vegam yarashta,” "You have
16 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

committed murder and now you wish to inherit the victim's fortune as

well" reverberated in our ears and in our wounded hearts for many years.

In Romania, Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine and elsewhere in the

Communist empire, Jewish cultural centers and synagogues, libraries and

museums, hospitals and children's homes had been confiscated,

demolished, or transformed into storage rooms, stables, shops or offices.

And nobody cared. People in high places chose to forget that the “final

solution” targeted both collectivities and individuals.

So, how can one not speak with anger?

Oh, yes. What they have done after the war to those who

survived – a few of them – it had a double effect on the victims, surely,

but also on those whom they have left behind. For a long, very long time,

both were forgotten or humiliated.

This conference constitutes proof that there exists now, thanks to

a few people that I mentioned – but then it became contagious – there

exists a desire to correct the injustices. The fact is that you are here, and

that proves that of course, you were not responsible for what happened

years ago. But it proves also that you now are committed to this noble,

magnificent effort.

I say injustices, but I mean some injustices. The true injustice,

the one dealing with the murder of six million Jewish men, women and

children, can never and will never be corrected. For them it is too late.

For some of their heirs it is not.

It is up to you to provide all needy survivors with comprehensive

health insurance and old age homes. Why don't you create a special

publishing house to print their testimonies, give the survivors a feeling

that their memories are important, that their experience is not lost? What

they have to say, no one can say. No one ever will.

Thus, it is really a matter not of money but of moral demand and

of commitment to conscience and memory. Memory is our shield.

Memory is our fortune, our only fortune. So, let us remember not only

the big fortunes, palaces and art treasures. Let us remember also the less

wealthy families: the small merchants, the cobblers, the peddlers, the

school teachers, the water carriers, the beggars. The enemy robbed them

of their poverty.

Even if we could receive, as a gesture of compensation or an act

of repentance, all the money in the world, it would not diminish the pain

we feel for the death of one Jewish child in Birkenau.

We are here because we remember. And that, in itself, is

sufficient to enable us to replace justifiable anger with impossible hope,

especially since we must admit that there were good people, too. There
OPENING STATEMENTS 17

were good people in all of those places, good men and women with kind

hearts, good officials with compassionate attitudes. And we are eternally

grateful to them, as we are always, on a different level. We say lehavdil

always to the state of Israel, simply because the state of Israel is here as a

home, as a dream that continues to be a dream even in reality.

Now, you are about to begin your discussions. May I tell you

that personally I was not and am not involved in this phase of

remembrance. We were not rich at home. Romania’s former president

wanted to make my house into a new museum, but I preferred it to be

inhabited by homeless families. My books, those I bought with my

pocket money in my childhood are lying in dust somewhere; I don't even

know where. Who can give them back to me? Who will give back the

prayerbooks, the tallith and the tefilin my father and I had in our bags

when we left for a place named Auschwitz? Who will give back what we

have lost as individual Jews and as communities?

I remember – I shall always remember – a little girl, a child with

golden hair and blue eyes, so heartbreakingly innocent. She had taken a

beautiful scarf with her, a scarf which she had received as a present for

Passover. She had no golden earrings, no bracelet, no watch, no jewelry,

nothing expensive, nothing special, nothing but that scarf. That was her

most cherished possession. You tell me: Are there enough funds in all

your banks to compensate her brother for her beautiful scarf and for her

golden hair? It is of them that you must think, today and tomorrow, the

day after tomorrow, and the day after and the year after when you discuss

money.

Thank you.

Opening Remarks

Mr. Miles Lerman

CHAIRMAN, UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST

MEMORIAL COUNCIL

UNITED STATES

Distinguished Dignitaries, Members of the Diplomatic Corps,

Conference Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Last night at the opening ceremony of the Washington

Conference on Holocaust Era-Assets, which was held in the Hall of

Remembrance of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, we

invoked memory and paid tribute to the victims of the Nazi inferno.

We remembered the six million Jews who were murdered for

one reason only because they were born Jewish. We paid tribute to the

millions of others who perished at the hands of the Nazis.

In our personal introspection, we remembered the fact that the

Holocaust did not begin with the mass killings in Eastern Europe. The

Holocaust began when Nazi mobs burned and desecrated synagogues

throughout Germany and Austria, looted Jewish stores, and humiliated

and incarcerated their owners while neighbors and friends remained

silent and looked the other way.

The Holocaust began when Germany’s social and legal

institutions supported a political regime that openly professed total

disregard for the sanctity of human life.

These are facts that we must always bear in mind.

Within the next three days, the representatives of 44 Nations will

engage in personal soul searching in an effort to undertake a financial

and moral audit of their own Nation’s conduct in those dreadful days.

We are here to acknowledge and bring to the attention of the

world the fact that the Holocaust was not limited to mass murder.

With the Holocaust also came the greatest theft in human history

– the theft of money, art, gold, precious manuscripts, insurance policies,

and a host of other victims’ assets.
20 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

It was not merely about murder and theft; it was also about the

destruction of a way of life. Indeed, the collective culture of the Jewish

people of Europe was devastated. Communal Jewish life in Eastern

Europe was totally shattered and irreparably eviscerated.

For decades, some in this room and many others around the

world have worked hard to preserve the memory of those who perished

in the Holocaust. These guardians of memory deserve our sincere

admiration for ensuring that the flame of remembrance will burn brightly

into the next century.

But you are looking at a man and a generation that understand

that the process of passing the torch must begin. It is only a matter of

time before the last Holocaust survivor and witness passes on.

We are fortunate that the children of survivors and their children

understand the imperative of continuing the legacy of remembrance.

For the sake of their future, our responsibility in the coming days

is to further a process that began in London to bring some justice to the

victims, their heirs, and to surviving remnant communities.

We must ask ourselves, how will history judges us? We must

ask, was there enough done to save lives, to stop the robbery, to fight the

evil that descended across Europe?

Our responsibility must be to examine the conduct of our own

respective nations. We must look at our own governments, our own

population. And most importantly, we must ask ourselves, is there

enough being done today in our respective countries to teach our citizens

about this tragic period in history? Are we bearing witness to both – to

the noble and the hideous?

Do we have the courage to acknowledge the black spots on our

national history?

Are we teaching our children the horrible lessons of the

Holocaust? And are we using these stories as a lesson and a warning?

Some of these themes will be covered at the State Department,

but especially at the Holocaust education sessions on Wednesday at the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. On that day, delegates from

around the world will explore and share ideas of how best to implement a

global network of Holocaust educational and remembrance programs, as

well as, research projects.

These are the programs that will be a true measure of the success

of this conference, since Holocaust education will impact generations to

come long after all outstanding financial claims will be accounted for.
OPENING STATEMENTS 21

As we begin our deliberations and as we begin to involve

ourselves in the minutia of one asset category or another – let us resolve

to not forget why we are here and what history expects of us.

Among those special people who fully understand and the

magnitude and importance of this Washington Conference is its

Chairman, whom I have the pleasure of introducing at this time.

We are fortunate that Judge Abner Mikva was chosen to chair

this Conference. He is a man of great intelligence, broad public service,

and has a deep and heartfelt appreciation of the Holocaust and its

consequences.

Judge Mikva served as White House Counsel to President

Clinton, and for many years served with distinction as Chief Judge of the

U.S. Court of appeal for the District of Columbia.

Before coming to the bench, he ably represented his Chicago

district in the U.S. House of Representatives for 10 years.

Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome Judge Abner Mikva.

Chairman’s Opening Statement

The Honorable Abner J. Mikva

CONFERENCE CHAIRMAN

INTRODUCTION

Secretary Albright, Under Secretary Eizenstat, Mr. Lerman,

distinguished delegates and friends: I am deeply honored to serve as

Chairman of this remarkable conference, and I am grateful for the

confidence you have placed in me. I have a great admiration and respect

for the groundbreaking work initiated at the London Nazi Gold

Conference exactly one year ago. I have particular respect for Lord

Mackay’s skillful and impartial chairmanship of that Conference -- a

standard that I will strive to meet.

The London Conference was a significant milestone in

documenting the historical record of Nazi-era confiscation of gold and

monetary assets. Out of that conference emerged an international

consensus that remaining issues needed to be addressed quickly and

compassionately. Thanks to your work then and since, which we will

review briefly later this morning, we all have a better understanding of

the terrible human price exacted during this tragic period. I am honored

to participate in this process – itself historic – of completing some of the

unfinished business of the Holocaust and the Second World War.

GOALS OF THE CONFERENCE

Our goal this week is to build on the positive momentum

generated by the London Conference as we turn to other categories of

assets: art and insurance in particular, as well as communal property.

First, we need to complete the international historical record in this area

so that we can gain a better understanding of the events and issues that

have shaped where we stand today. Second, with this historical context

as our basis, we can then turn to current efforts for handling these issues
24 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

fairly and openly. Countries have already made important progress in

developing broad principles and specific processes for dealing with these

issues. Finally, I look forward to hearing the reports and discussions of

the presenters and delegations and expect we will be able to draw on

these shared initiatives and experiences to forge consensus on principles

and practices that we can use to resolve remaining issues. This is the

central concept underpinning our agenda and I hope that it will frame the

legacy of the Washington Conference.

The basic framework for the plenaries and break-out sessions

will be to review and add to the historical record, identify the issues

involved, discuss past and present restitution efforts and consider how

the international community can agree on effective ways to move

forward on finding solutions in the art, insurance and communal property

areas in particular—as well as highlighting the importance of opening

archives, considering the fate of looted books and not least important,

promoting Holocaust education and remembrance.

As you can see, the agenda for this Conference is exceedingly

challenging, even for the three days allotted. The issues with which we

will be dealing are both extremely complex and highly charged. We have

over 80 presenters providing expertise and opinion. We also have 60

delegations. As a result, some delegations may not have an opportunity

to make interventions from the floor, or will want to make more detailed

interventions than the time available. As Chairman of the Conference, I –

and the Chairmen of the various break-out sessions – will seek to

maximize the time available for interventions and to recognize as wide a

body of comment as possible. If, in the end, this proves insufficient, I

want to remind delegations that they may submit position papers that will

become part of the official record of this Conference. Instructions for this

have already been provided to delegations.

In the field of Nazi-confiscated art, we are honored to have as

presenters several scholars who have studied the historical record to

identify what the Nazis did with art and why they did it. We know that

thousands of works were taken from victims of the Holocaust, some by

expropriation, some by forced sale, some after house-to-house searches

by agents of the Nazi regime. Many were parts of important collections;

all were precious to those who owned them.

In recent years there has been a growing awareness of the

problem and greater efforts to identify confiscated art. Resolving

ownership claims presents questions for governments, as well as for

museums, galleries, dealers and collectors. We hope, in this Conference,

to explore what happened to art during the War and its aftermath, to hear
OPENING STATEMENTS 25

how various countries are addressing the issue today, to gain an

understanding of the practical problems involved in identifying this art

and finding its pre-War owners, and to encourage a candid discussion of

the problems and the equities involved. As we continue to work to find

missing art works and missing owners or heirs, we must establish

creative, constructive guidelines for the often complex and emotional

cases of confiscated art that remain.

As a judge, I know that justice is often in the eye of the beholder.

One such example of a creative solution involved a contested art work

that was resolved by one party receiving compensation for half of the

value of the work, while the other party donated its half of the work to a

museum where it will be available for viewing by the public. That

happened in my own city of Chicago.

Much work has already been done on both sides of the Atlantic

by a number of governments and private entities alike to identify

guidelines for use in resolving these issues. I hope the Conference can

agree on a group of principles that can be followed in resolving these

questions, so that justice can be done, and the purchase and sale and

display of works of art can proceed, free of the impediment of history.

Indeed, the Conference organizers circulated a discussion paper

comprising eleven general principles relating to Nazi-confiscated art

during consultations for this Conference. We have put another copy of

this paper in each delegation’s box. I urge you to consider these

principles and hope that we can reach consensus on them during the

Conference.

On insurance, another immensely complex and sensitive issue,

we will also examine the historical record and consider the particular

efforts of governments to provide compensation. We will also focus on

current solutions to this half-century old problem—including the recent

establishment of the International Commission (IC) made up of

regulators, companies, survivor organizations, and Jewish groups. The IC

will adjudicate claims and pay claimants even if they cannot establish a

claim. It can also provide relief to survivors in need. I hope that the

Conference will consider whether this particular process is a promising

way forward to resolve these very difficult issues.

The issue of communal property encompasses property seized by

the Nazis and other authoritarian regimes from religious groups. In

addition to real estate, this property also includes religious artifacts

including torahs. The circumstances of each property vary considerably,

as do the legal situations in each country where the property is located.

Our presenters will describe the wartime, post-war, and post-Cold War
26 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

history as well as efforts on the part of countries, including those in

Central and Eastern Europe, to identify procedures that are realistic and

practical. I hope we can identify a procedure in each country, which is

equitable, transparent, non-discriminatory and expeditious. While that is

a tall order, nothing less will assure that justice is finally done in this

area.

The Conference will also address two other important sets of

issues, which, while not categorized as assets, are no less tangible or

essential to our entire enterprise. First, we will consider the issue of

archives both in terms of their progressive opening in recent years and

their role as the basis for the work of the many national historical

commissions that are with us at the Conference.

Second, we will also focus on the importance of Holocaust

education and remembrance activities. We will highlight the work of the

International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and

Research—an unprecedented and innovative effort on the part of

Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Israel to

promote international cooperation in these areas of enduring importance.

By identifying common projects that countries can undertake in the area

of education, we have the opportunity to make a long-lasting

contribution to widespread understanding and acknowledgement of this

tragic period in the world’s history.

CONCLUSION

I am enthusiastic and excited about the opportunity this

Conference has to clarify the historical record, increase the world’s

awareness of the many layers of complexity at work during the

Holocaust era, and to establish common approaches to the problems

remaining from that time. We are all affected by and held responsible for

the consequences of our history. In striving to remember the past

honestly, we show our respect for the unprecedented human suffering

that occurred and our commitment to reconciliation. By remembering, by

providing a measure of justice, we can accept the past and build a more

equitable future.

By our actions we are setting an example for following

generations of integrity. We need to seek solutions for difficult

circumstances that express our inner sense of justice. The fact that we

have assembled 56 delegations made up of government officials,

historians, art experts and NGOs from 43 countries is a tribute to the
OPENING STATEMENTS 27

international community’s involvement in working together to find

common approaches to these important issues. While we are not here to

make government decisions on specific course of action on each set of

issues, we do have the opportunity to reach a consensus where we can. I

hope to use my concluding statement to highlight some of these specific

ways where our countries are moving forward to resolve, finally, these

issues still lingering from the past.

I want to thank you all for coming together at this historic

Conference; your active participation in this process has already

contributed to the international search for truth and the quest for justice.

It is a privilege for us to work together to face these difficult issues and

find solutions. Our efforts here this week can go far towards restoring

trust and faith in the rule of law and accountability for acts regardless of

historical constraints.

Keynote Address

Madeleine K. Albright

SECRETARY OF STATE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Thank you, Stu, very much, for that introduction. On behalf of

President Clinton and the American people, I'm pleased to join in

welcoming all of you to the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era

Assets. I want to begin by thanking Miles Lerman and the US Holocaust

Memorial Museum for co-hosting this event and for their unceasing

efforts to keep before us the memory and lessons of history's most

monstrous crime.

I also want to thank one of our nation's most accomplished

public servants, Judge Abner Mikva, for accepting the role of Conference

chairman. And I want to express appreciation to each of you who are

participating in our sessions, and especially to those who will chair them,

including New York Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Bill McDonough,

a good friend; Ambassador Louis Amigues of France; US Representative

Ben Gilman; and Congressman Jim Leach; and US Ambassador to

Sweden, Lyndon Olson.

We're here to chart a course for finishing the job of returning or

providing compensation for stolen Holocaust assets to survivors and the

families of Holocaust victims. This mission began more than five

decades ago, even before the war was over, when Nazi looting was

condemned by the London Declaration of 1943.

In the early post-war period, the allies made good faith but

incomplete, efforts at restitution. For decades thereafter, the job lingered

unfinished, with vital questions unanswered, important documents

unexamined and critical issues unresolved.

Then, in just the past few years, as Holocaust survivors aged and

the century began drawing to a close, the quest for answers received a

fresh burst of energy; and for that, the credit must be widely shared.

Certainly, the eyes of the world would have remained averted from this

issue if not for the remarkable work of the World Jewish Congress and
30 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

other Jewish and public interest groups. In the face of daunting obstacles,

they've been tireless, creative and very effective.

We are indebted as well to the many governments represented

here that have come forward to address this issue with generosity and

zeal. I mention particularly Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and the

British Government for their insightful publications and statements and

for convening last year's landmark conference in London on Nazi gold.

And I am very, very proud of Under Secretary of State Stu Eizenstat and

his team for setting out the historical record with rigorous objectivity and

exhaustive detail in two US Government reports. Stu, I think we all owe

you an incredible debt.

All this is important work and hard. It requires that painful

memories be revisited, easy evasions confronted and inconvenient

questions asked and answered. Above all, it demands that we be

relentless in our search for truth, despite the fact that in dealing with the

Holocaust, the truth is terrible beyond comprehension.

In recent years, the world has done much to retrieve facts from

obscurity concerning the secretive handling and pernicious use of Nazi

looted gold. No fewer than 17 historical commissions are studying the

subject from the perspective of their own countries. The Tripartite Gold

Commission has closed out its work; and almost $60 million has been

pledged to the relief fund for the victims of Nazi persecution that was

launched at the Conference in London.

We hope that the progress on gold will serve as a catalyst for

similar progress in the categories of assets we will focus on this week,

which are insurance and art as well as communal property. In each of

these areas, the world's experts are here - from governments and nongovernmental organizations, corporate boardrooms and university

classrooms. We're here to compare views and share knowledge, frame

the issues and achieve consensus on ways to move forward as rapidly,

thoroughly and fairly as possible.

The historical and legal challenges vary from issue to issue, but

whether we're seeking the payment of life insurance to families of those

who perished in the camps, researching artwork from the walls of a

museum in Warsaw, or weighing compensation for a synagogue reduced

to ashes in Czechoslovakia, the moral imperative is the same. I hope,

therefore, that we will be able to work together constructively in an

atmosphere free from threats to develop specific principles and identify

best practices for art, insurance and other topics.

I hope, as well, that our work will be driven by certain

overarching imperatives. The first is that our goal must be justice, even
OPENING STATEMENTS 31

though justice in this searing context is a highly relative term. We know

well our inability to provide true justice to Holocaust victims. We cannot

restore life nor rewrite history. But we can make the ledger slightly less

out of balance by devoting our time, energy and resources to the search

for answers, the return of property and the payment of just claims.

Our second imperative must be openness. Because the sands of

time have obscured so much, we must dig to find the truth. This means

that researchers must have access to old archives; and by that, I don't

mean partial, sporadic or eventual access - I mean access in full,

everywhere, now.

Our third imperative is to understand that the obligation to seek

truth and act on it is not the burden of some, but of all; it is universal. As

the United States has recognized by declassifying documents and

creating its own presidential advisory commission on Holocaust assets,

every nation, every business, every organization and every person able to

contribute to the full telling of the story is obliged to do so. In this arena,

none of us are mere spectators, none are neutral; for better or worse, we

are all actors on history's stage.

The fourth imperative that propels our work is urgency.

Remaining Holocaust survivors have reached an advanced stage in life.

More than five decades have passed since the Nazis perpetrated their

thefts and murders. As records are lost and memories fade, effective

restitution becomes more difficult. So let us each vow that by the dawn

of the new century, we have done all things possible to conclude the

unfinished business of the old.

Finally, we must remember that our efforts here serve a twin

purpose. Part one is to forge a common approach to the issues still

surrounding Holocaust assets. Part two is to advance Holocaust

education, remembrance and research. This is a task that knows no end.

It must be renewed as the human race is renewed, generation by

generation, so that the reality of the Holocaust is always before us and

never ceases to disturb us.

It is encouraging that in the months preceding this conference,

we have seen significant strides forward. The American Association of

Art Museum Directors has formulated principles and guidelines to

govern the handling of tabled Holocaust-Era art. An international

commission led by former Secretary of State, Larry Eagleburger, has

been formed to resolve unpaid insurance claims. Companies participating

in that commission have agreed to establish a $90 million humanitarian

fund and to audit their books to identify unpaid Holocaust-Era claims.

And at Sweden's initiative, an unprecedented inter-governmental [effort]
32 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

to promote Holocaust education around the world is underway. We hope

that every country will participate in that effort.

The struggle to reveal and deal with the full truth surrounding

the handling of Holocaust-Era assets is wrenching, but also cathartic.

Only by knowing and being honest about the past can we gain peace in

the present and confidence in the future. That is true for nations and for

institutions, and it's true as well for people.

I cannot conclude this statement without addressing briefly a

subject for which I have not yet found - and will never find - exactly the

right words; and that concerns my grandparents, whom I learned recently

were Jewish and died along with aunts, uncles and cousins in the

Holocaust.

When I was young, I didn't often think about grandparents; I just

knew I didn't have any. I was an infant when I separated from them. Now

I, too, have become a grandparent, and I look at my children's children

and the love and pride literally overflows. I am sure now that I was once

the object of such affection not only from my parents, but from those

who gave them life. And as I think of my life now in my 62nd year, I

think also of my grandparents' lives in those final years, months and

days.

I think of the faces at the Holocaust Museum and Yad Vashem

and the long list of names on the wall of the Pynkas Synagogue in

Prague; among them those of my grandparents, Olga and Arnost Korbel

and Ruzene Spieglova. I think of the blood that is in my family veins.

Does it matter what kind of blood it is? It shouldn't; it is just blood that

does its job. But it mattered to Hitler and that matters to us all; because

that is why 6 million Jews died. And that is why this obscenity of

suffering was visited on so many innocent, irreplaceable people - people

who loved and enriched life with their warmth, their smiles and the

embrace of their arms; people whose lives ended horribly and far too

soon; people whose lives and suffering we must never forget or allow to

diminish, even if we must, from time to time, intentionally shock our

collective memory.

The peoples of the world differ in language, culture, history and

choices of worship. Such differences make life interesting and rich. But

as the Holocaust cries out to us, we must never allow these distinctions to

obscure the common humanity that binds us all as people. We must

never allow pride in us to curdle into hatred of them.

Remembering that lesson is what this effort at research and

restitution of Holocaust-Era assets is really all about. For it is about
OPENING STATEMENTS 33

much more than gold and art and insurance; it's about remembering that

no one's blood is less or more precious than our own.

There are those who say that we're all prisoners of history and

that humankind is doomed to repeat its worst mistakes over and over

again. There are those who view the Holocaust as the freakish

consequence of a sole demented mind - an accident of history whose

repetition we need not fear. Still others point to the passing decades and

ask whether it's not time to forget and move on and leave remaining

questions unasked and the rest of the truth unknown. And yes, there are

still a few who deny the reality that it happened at all.

In reply, we must admit that we're not given perfect wisdom, nor

the power to change human character, nor the gift of prophecy. But we

do have the power of memory, and can make certain that the dead shall

never be forgotten from our hearts. We have the power of reason and can

separate right from wrong. We have the power of hope and can pray, in

the words of the Psalms, for a time when "truth shall spring out of the

Earth and righteousness shall look down from Heaven."

And we have the power to choose. We can contemplate the

Holocaust in despair, or we can consider the Holocaust and vow never

again to allow complacency or fear or despair to excuse inaction.

We gather here this week not to achieve miracles, but rather to

do everything in our power to replace dark with light, injustice with

fairness, contention with consensus and falsehood with truth. That is the

most we can do. That is the least we must do. It is what we owe to the

past; it is our hope for the future; and in the largest sense, it is the hope of

the world.

Let me welcome you again to this conference, and may our

shared efforts prosper. Thank you all very, very much.

Message from Robin Cook,

Foreign Secretary

United Kingdom

DELIVERED BY MR. ANTHONY LAYDEN

HEAD OF DELEGATION

UNITED KINGDOM

Secretary of State, Chairman, distinguished delegates,

When I opened the London Conference on Nazi Gold almost

exactly a year ago, I said that the group of 41 countries and 6 nongovernmental organizations taking part had come together to "clarify one

of the darkest episodes in human history", and to "shine a light in corners

which have stayed dark too long".

The London Conference undoubtedly accomplished that: the

papers presented there, later published in book form and distributed to

delegates, represent the largest and most diverse body of information on

the subject of Nazi Gold yet assembled.

But the London Conference did more than that. It also addressed

the question of compensation for those whose gold the Nazis had seized,

both countries and individuals. It looked backwards at what had already

been done, and forwards at the case for further help to victims of Nazi

persecution, especially those in greatest need, and for whom least had

been done until then.

The Chairman of the London Conference, Lord Mackay of

Clashfern, noted in his Conclusions that "all present were agreed that the

international community must look urgently and imaginatively for ways

to bring relief to such people”. The International Fund for Needy Victims

of Nazi Persecution, whose establishment I announced in London on 2

December last year, aims to do exactly this. It has met a ready response

from the countries receiving shares of the Tripartite Gold Commission's

monetary gold pool, and from a number of other countries as well.

Your Conference will shortly hear reports from the French and

United Kingdom Delegations on progress made since the London

Conference in winding up the Tripartite Commission, releasing its
36 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

archives, and making the Fund a reality. In my view this process has

been an extremely imaginative and successful piece of modern

diplomacy, of which all the participants can feel justly proud.

Much has been done since this group of countries and

organizations met in London a year ago. The United Kingdom, as

chairman of the Tripartite Commission and as Account Holder for the

Fund account, has played an important role in this. More needs to be

done in the future. I hope your Conference will provide a stimulus for

this; and I pledge that the UK will continue to play its part as the Fund's

Account Holder with energy and diligence.

This Conference in Washington goes on to address a wider group

of issues than we dealt with in London: art, insurance, property, archives

and education. All are important aspects of the search for clarity about

the tragic events of half a century ago. I am sure your proceedings will

be imbued with the same spirit of ready, practical co-operation between

governments and nongovernmental organizations which we saw in

London.

Perhaps the most valuable part of your agenda for its long-term

effect is Holocaust education, commemoration and research. In the UK,

we have been active in this area for many years. When our National

Curriculum for Education was introduced seven years ago, the Holocaust

was included as a compulsory component of the modern history

curriculum for students aged 13 to 14. There is close cooperation

between Government and the relevant nongovernmental organizations.

Five of these organizations are represented in the UK Delegation to this

Conference, including the Holocaust Educational Trust, of which Lord

Janner, who first suggested that the London Conference be held, is

Chairman.

It is vital that future generations worldwide should learn about

the Holocaust. We must heed this warning about what can happen if

discrimination and intolerance are allowed to grow unchecked. We have

also found in the UK that learning about the Holocaust can help

considerably in reducing social, racial and other tensions in schools.

Schools have described the effect in this area of visits by Holocaust

survivors as "near-miraculous".

The UK has been an enthusiastic participant in the International

Task Force on Holocaust Education, which will be reporting to your

Conference on 3 December, since it was suggested to Prime Minister

Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton by the Swedish Prime Minister,

Goran Persson, earlier this year. We have agreed to take on the

Chairmanship of this group, which now includes also Germany and
OPENING STATEMENTS 37

Israel, after the Washington Conference, and shall continue to do all we

can to advance its work.

Secretary of State, Chairman, and distinguished Delegates, I

wish you every success in your endeavors.

Opening Remarks

Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat

UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ECONOMIC,

BUSINESS AND AGRICULTURAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES

HEAD OF DELEGATION

Mr. Chairman, delegates, ladies and gentlemen: Let me begin by

saying what a privilege it is to head the United States delegation for this

landmark event. I want to first take a moment to thank Judge Abner

Mikva for agreeing to be the Chairman of the Washington Conference on

Holocaust-Era Assets. His probity and integrity will give this Conference

the leadership that will be essential to its success.

It is also a pleasure to follow my friend Anthony Layden of the

United Kingdom. Anthony's diplomatic and organizational abilities

brought the London Conference to life, exactly one year ago, and his

leadership, along with that of our French colleagues has helped bring the

Tripartite Gold Commission to an honorable close.

Finally, I want to say a special word about British Foreign

Secretary Robin Cook, whose leadership in convening the London

Conference helped capture the world's attention and galvanize action

toward the cause of justice. I will have something to say later in the

Conference about another person from the United Kingdom, Lord

Janner.

Opening the London Conference, Foreign Secretary Cook spoke

of our dual responsibilities to the victims of the Nazis. "To those who are

still alive, we must ensure that the unbearable tragedy of living through

the Holocaust is not compounded by an old age marked by the fear and

sadness of poverty.... To those who died, we have a different duty – to

document the facts, to gather the evidence, to locate the truth."

We also have a further responsibility – to heed the lessons of

these tragic events by renewing our commitment to usher in a new and

brighter century, marked by freedom and respect for the fundamental

dignity of each individual. We, who have listened to the stories of the
40 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

survivors and have tried to absorb the memory of the unimaginable

horror inflicted on the victims, now have a solemn responsibility: To be

the trustees of their memory and their advocates for justice.

It is this responsibility that must serve as our guiding beacon

while we seek to illuminate the tragedies of the past and provide

enduring lessons for future generations.

Our overarching responsibilities and priorities are clear – to

complete the historical record, however complex, while providing some

measure of justice, however belated, for the survivors,

We must review our current efforts while developing a clear and

realistic consensus on how to sustain, and where possible to accelerate

the momentum generated by the London Conference so that we can

complete our tasks by the end of this century – December 31, 1999.

A year ago at the London Conference the international

community addressed the issue of Nazi-looted gold. On the final day of

the Conference, we broadened the scope of our discussion to encompass

other categories of assets confiscated by the Nazis. In light of the

importance, complexity, and urgency of these issues, the United States

recognized the need to hold a second conference, which would primarily

focus on looted art and insurance policies, as well as communal property

and other assets.

As the host of the Washington Conference, the United States has

attempted to construct a Conference that reflects the widest possible

points of view compromising all 44 governments and 13 NGOs

represented here. Through continuing consultations with you and an

organizing seminar held this past June, we have refined the agenda and

the goals that we hope the delegations assembled here can constructively

pursue this week. We are very pleased that so many countries have

joined with us in moving the process forward. In particular, I want to

thank the British government for the advice and strong support it has

given our Conference. Also, I extend my appreciation to the French

government for playing such a critical leadership role on the issues of art,

insurance and archives. Let me say a few words about each of the major

issues comprising the Conference agenda, and the view of the United

States on how they might best be approached.

The subject of looted art is significant to the heritage and culture

of all peoples – well beyond its value in monetary terms. One-fifth of all

the art in Europe was uprooted during World War II and today there are

countless survivors and families who still do not know the whereabouts

of their priceless artworks. Today, a growing number of nations and

institutions are acknowledging these claims and are demonstrating a new
OPENING STATEMENTS 41

willingness to locate missing artworks, publicize their existence,

determine their provenance and come to a just and fair resolution of

ownership questions. A number of European countries are addressing

these issues in a constructive manner, none more so than Austria, which

recently passed a law allowing claims to be made on Nazi-looted

artworks found in the nation's federal museums. This is the first time a

European government has taken such a far-reaching step and it is our

hope that Austria's actions will serve as an example for other nations to

emulate.

Based on our consultations over the last several months, I am

hopeful that the Conference can achieve consensus on ways to bring

about a speedier and far less confrontational resolution to the problem of

looted art. Tomorrow I shall suggest a set of principles based closely on

existing practices drawn from both sides of the Atlantic. They will call

for new efforts to find missing art, including the use of new technologies

in searching for evidence and matching art with claims as well as new

methods of dispute resolution for deciding these claims. I urge your

consideration for establishing a consensus around these principles. What

we do here can go a long way toward reconciling the very real

sensitivities and needs of current owners and those who lost art during

the war.

The international art market must be open, stable, and free of

uncertainty that it might be trading in works that are tainted by Nazi

looting. The exchange of art is essential to our understanding and

recognition of different cultures, and the resolution of Nazi-confiscated

art issues will be critical for ensuring that this age-old process of cultural

exchange continues for future generations. But, it is equally critical that

families from whom art was looted by the Nazis have the full opportunity

to find and reclaim their artworks.

Regarding the issue of insurance, our goals are twofold: First, we

must review the historical evidence relating to the loss of insurance

assets during the Holocaust era. Second, we must examine subsequent

efforts by governments and companies to provide compensation. From

these reviews, we need to understand the post-war programs for

compensation and examine the steps we can take today to continue

redressing past injustices.

The establishment of the new international Commission on

Holocaust-Era Insurance Claims – inspired by leaders of the National

Association of Insurance Commissioners like Neil Levin of New York

and Glenn Pomeroy of North Dakota and chaired by former Secretary of

State Lawrence Eagleburger – is a particularly encouraging development
42 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

because it offers an efficient and effective means of advancing the swift

and just resolution of these issues. By bringing together key actors such

as insurance regulators, insurance companies and Jewish groups, we are

helping ensure that the goals and purposes of the Commission will be

met.

I look forward to hearing from the Commission about their very

encouraging efforts to resolve these difficult issues. For those who have

perished, we must ensure that their policies are finally paid. For

Holocaust survivors – many of whom are in their later years – it is

absolutely imperative that we act now.

In this regard, I want to express my great appreciation for the

strong interest that the former Communist countries of Central and

Eastern Europe have begun to show in resolving Holocaust insurance and

communal property issues. After the enormous destruction and despair of

World War II, these nations lived under the iron fist of Communist

dictatorship and economic deprivation, which prevented them from

addressing these issues in a just manner, They, as well as Holocaust

survivors, have been the double victims of World War II, having suffered

under both Nazism and Communism. To be sure, it was not only Jewish,

but also Catholic and Protestant communal property that was confiscated.

And today the region's democratic governments are taking concrete steps

to rectify these injustices. It is now time to build on these encouraging

examples and shape an international consensus on principles for moving

forward so that we can advance the cause of justice and strengthen

democratic institutions in adherence to the rule of law.

At the same time, the return of Jewish communal property, such

as synagogues, cemeteries, day schools, and community centers, is

absolutely essential to the reemergence and rebirth of Jewish communal

life in Central and Eastern Europe. During my travels as the State

Department's Special Envoy on Property Restitution, I have seen

firsthand how many of these communities are impoverished and in need

have outside support if they are to survive and prosper into the next

millennium.

Of course, if we are to truly make a better world for the future,

then all nations must be willing to take a long-delayed and serious

examination of the events of the past. After nearly five decades of

silence, there has been an explosion in scholarship and research by

various national governments, international institutions and independent

scholars about the events surrounding the Holocaust. In fact, the U.S.

government has made more than 15 million pages of documents

available for researchers. Having recently returned from South America
OPENING STATEMENTS 43

and meetings with the Commission for the Clarification of Nazi

Activities in Argentina and the Special Commission for Investigation of

Nazi Property in Brazil, I can attest to the fact that many nations around

the world are demonstrating great courage and determination in coming

to grips with their actions during the Nazi quest for global domination.

Much work, however, remains to be done in setting the record

straight and more steps should be taken to ensure that the fullest possible

openness and accessibility of archives on the fate of Nazi looted assets is

provided by the end of 1999. Only by opening these archives can we

fully illuminate the long-hidden issues of Holocaust-era assets, and gain

a complete and unvarnished view of the events surrounding the

Holocaust.

Over the past five decades, many nations have undertaken the

often painful steps of educating their citizens about their behavior during

the Nazi era. Nowhere has this been more evident than in Germany,

which has taken notable and commendable steps to come to grips with its

past conduct. Another positive example is Sweden, which has not only

strengthened its own Holocaust education efforts at home, but has

launched the International Task Force on Cooperation on Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research. The Task Force report, which I

will be presenting tomorrow on behalf of the United States, Sweden, the

United Kingdom, Germany and Israel, includes a declaration calling on

all countries represented at the Washington Conference to join us in

strengthening their Holocaust educational activities.

A commitment to strengthening Holocaust education,

remembrance and research must be a fundamental goal of each of our

nations. Such remembrance is the most appropriate means of taking from

the dark lessons of the past a renewed vigor in ensuring that similar

horrors are never repeated again. As we prepare to enter a new century, it

must be our continuing determination to ensure that we fulfill our

responsibilities by educating future generations on the horrors of the

past-century. We must keep in mind the ancient Jewish saying that "The

only truly dead are those who have been forgotten."

To be sure, our gathering today is not a decision-making body.

Nonetheless, it is the hope of the United States that issue by issue and

session by session we strive to craft a strong and durable consensus on

the complex and sensitive issues before us this week.

As we prepare to begin our deliberations, we must be guided by

this simple proposition: We can only usher in a freer and more dignified

next century by penning the final chapter on the most horrific and

soul-searching event of the past century.
44 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Our efforts this week will bring a greater determination, a greater

understanding and a greater resolve to continue and complete in the

months ahead the process of pursuing the truth, uncovering the facts,

providing restitution, achieving closure, educating future generations,

righting the wrongs of the past and finally seeking justice.

These efforts are critical not just to the survivors and to the

deceased, but in fact to all humanity and to the simple proposition of a

better world firmly anchored in truth, justice and the fundamental dignity

of each human being. Thank you.
Opening Remarks

Mr. Avraham Hirchson

MEMBER OF KNESSET

ISRAEL

HEAD OF DELEGATION

Perla Danziger from Lodz, killed in Auschwitz, 2 years old.

Shmuel Davner from Lodz, killed in Treblinka, 6 years old.

Feya Damchzek from Riga, killed in Riga, 8 years old.

Lenny Davids from Holland, killed in Sobibor, 9 years old.

Renya Federgreen from Krakow, killed in Bergen-Belsen, 12 years old.

Rosa Danzon from Paris, killed in Auschwitz, 16 years old.

Gittel Dantos from Warsaw, killed in Treblinka, 13 years old.

Yosef Danziger from Sosnovitz, killed in Birkenau, 16 years old.

Daniel Danielek from Warsaw, killed in Treblinka, 16 years old.

Motel Danishevsky from Poltowa, killed in Treblinka, 16 years old.

Ladies and gentlemen,

These are just a few names from a list – a very, very long list – a

list which should never have existed; a list of victims of the Jewish

people in the Holocaust period.
46 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

If I were to read out the names of the entire six million people on

this list, taking just one second to read each name, each individual

person, each human being – it would take me more than two months.

In the time available today, I cannot share with you even the

names of the million and half Jewish children who were exterminated in

the Holocaust.

Today, I am addressing you as a representative of the State of

Israel, which was founded for the Jewish people. I am speaking to you on

behalf of each mother and daughter, each father and son, each and every

one of those six million Jews who can no longer speak for themselves

and who did not have the privilege of seeing the renaissance of the

Jewish people in its historical homeland.

Today, at this Conference, we can look with pride at what we

have achieved so far on the issue of restitution of Jewish property but we

must also recognize the challenges still to come.

From the very beginning, all of us involved in this issue set

ourselves no boundaries – neither the geographical boundaries of any

particular state nor any particular area (such as insurance, banking or

art). As things unfolded, we found that we were dealing with the

restitution of goods stolen in the greatest robbery ever carried out in the

history of the world, let alone in Jewish history. The extent of this

robbery is so great that no one dares put a figure on its real magnitude,

and only a few people are willing to confront the broad, almost unlimited

range of countries and bodies which took part in it, whether actively,

passively or by simply closing their eyes.

Today, we know for certain that Jews throughout the whole of

Europe were stripped utterly bare on their way to the crematoria. They

were robbed not only of the clothes on their backs, but also of any sign or

distinguishing sign of their human image.

Therefore, we should also look into the moral aspect of our

activity. We are not involved in vengeance, but rather a sacred duty.

Vengeance is driven by instinct. Duty is driven by the feeling of mission.

We are the emissaries of those people – the elderly and the

children, the men and women – who were condemned to suffer such

torments on their way to physical destruction, torments which were

intended to strip them of absolutely everything – their entire social or

cultural worth, their total humanity. There is no other explanation for

taking away clothes and glasses, for burning books, plundering works of

art, destroying all cultural symbols, denying all religious freedom. Not

only did the Nazi oppressors and their allies rob us of our parents and

fellow Jews; they also tried to strip us of the symbols of our culture and
OPENING STATEMENTS 47

history. They were not satisfied with our physical extermination; on the

way to the death pits and the smoking crematoria they also stripped their

victims of every single personal object.

Therefore, the struggle which we are waging is not only the

determination of the Jewish people to recover its looted property – it is

also a struggle for the very image and character of the world and its

moral system.

The fact that this conference is taking place does not mean that

our work is completed. The struggle has begun. It is not over. We know

that the despicable robbery was not only carried out by the German Nazi

oppressor and his collaborators in the offensive against free Europe, but

there were also partners from various nations. Even the neutral countries

were unconcerned that they were making handsome profits from trading

in goods and works of art expropriated from their rightful owners. Even

the Allies contributed, in certain ways, albeit unwittingly, to this greatest

robbery of all time.

Some of the wrongs have been redressed. Norway has shown

sensitivity and responsibility. Its Government has set up a Commission

which is in the final stages of compensating its Jewish citizens and its

Jewish community for the property stolen from them by the Germans and

those Norwegians who saw fit to identify with them. Other countries

should follow a similar path and act as bravely and honestly as Norway

has done.

Some of them have already seen fit to open their archives and

make their findings available to all those bodies, organizations and

individuals interested in examining them. Some of the countries are

adamantly refusing to do so and I believe, Ladies and gentlemen, that

one of the resolutions of this Conference should be an unmistakable call

to all those countries and bodies still refusing to open their archives – to

do so sooner rather than later.

The arrangement reached with the Swiss banks after a long

drawn-out struggle was a first step in the right direction for all matters

involving private institutions and companies. If they have not yet done

so, the insurance companies, other banks and institutions must follow the

correct path which has already been taken by other institutions. This

means examining their records and the information in their possession

and reaching an appropriate arrangement on the basis of their findings.

It is my pleasant duty now to refer to the United States, the

world's greatest democracy, under whose auspices this Conference is

taking place. This is not the first time that the United States has been

involved in and contributed to the struggle for the return of Jewish assets.
48 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

With President Clinton's blessing and under the leadership of

Under Secretary of State, Stuart Eizenstat, the United States has

undertaken not only to contribute to the struggle on one front together

with us, but also to examine the documents and the archives in the

United States itself – a thorough, in-depth, responsible and honest

examination, even if less pleasant aspects of its past are exposed by some

of its findings. In this way, the United States has also set an appropriate

and correct model for all other countries. The wrongs of the past cannot

be redressed, but there must be an honest, penetrating look at the past.

This is the only way to ensure that a change has, indeed, taken place in

the post-war period.

There are those of us who always knew that the accounts might

be dormant but the memories were not; who always believed that the

money might have vanished from sight but that justice would emerge;

that we were right to risk the world's favor in order to ensure that the

entire world would respect us and relate to us as equals, and admire those

who have already chosen to take the correct path, and encourage those

who are still hesitating to tread that path with us.

We will, without a doubt, have to continue our efforts to make

sure that the last chapter of the Second World War be written clearly and

fairly, in order to restore Jewish honor and Jewish pride to our people,

who have suffered so terribly. We are just at the beginning of the path

and there is much to be done in order to complete our task in the many

countries and different areas concerned.

All of us who are involved in this task have vowed to remember

and not forget, to remember and to remind.

I hope that by the end of this millennium we will be able to close

this chapter in the history books and open a new chapter in the

relationship between the Jewish people and the countries of the free

world.
Opening Remarks

Dr. Rajko Djuric

INTERNATIONAL ROMANI UNION

HEAD OF DELEGATION

Ladies and gentlemen,

The International Romani Union is most grateful for the

invitation to participate in this conference. We are grateful above all to

the government and the people of the United States of America who have

made it possible for the historical truth of the around 12 million

Romanies be heard, the truth of a people which the Nazis planned to

completely exterminate, as too they planned to eliminate the Jews.

Receiving the opportunity to participate in this conference also moves us

to express our gratitude to our brothers and sisters to whom we are linked

by historical fate, the Jews, whose systematic study of the Holocaust has

contributed to keeping alive the memory of our people’s Holocaust.

In contrast to the Enlightenment, whose most learned

representatives, Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alambert, gave humanity the

encyclopedia, a compendium of all the scholarship, social and artistic

experience of the time, our Age has seen the creation of an

“Encyclopedia of the Holocaust!” The sufferings and the anguish of my

people, the Romanies, and the half a million Romanies murdered in

Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Buchenwald,

Dachau, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück, Jasenovac etc., occupy significantly

more space in this encyclopedia, an encyclopedia of death, than do the

entries in contemporary general encyclopedias on my people’s history,

social life and culture from our origins through until today. My people’s

entire history and current way of life are literally overshadowed by our

better documented and more comprehensively researched “way of

death.” This trail of death and suffering began in Dachau in 1934 and led

via Marzahn near Berlin (where in 1936 during the Berlin Olympics [!] a

camp with the cynical name “resting Place” was set up specially for Sinti

and Romanies) all the way to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the so-called

“Gypsy Camp” B IIe. Christian Bernadac describes in his book

“Vergessener Holocaust” (Forgotten Holocaust) how 4,000 Sinti and
50 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Romanies were sent to Crematorium no. 1 there in just one night, from

the 2nd to the 3rd of August 1944.

On the 3rd of August 1994 the 50th anniversary of the beginning

of the Romanies’ extermination was marked in Auschwitz. Assembled

there at the place of our mothers’ and fathers’ suffering, we received

letters from the then President of Poland, Lech Walesa, from the

President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, and also from Pope John

Paul II. The message from the Pope read as follows:

“Together with all the participants of the

commemoration in Auschwitz I kneel down, deeply

moved and in deference, at the place which holds the

ashes of the Nazis’ genocide. In particular I remember

the tragic fate of the Gypsies, our sisters and brothers,

who were interned in the concentration camp in

Auschwitz-Birkenau. I have done this many times as

Metropolitan Bishop of Kraków, and today I do it as

Ladies and gentlemen,

When I contemplate the history of my people an image of Simon

Luis appears before me. Simon Luis was a Romanie from France

interned in the concentration camp in Buchenwald. Simon was tattooed

over much of his body – on his fingers, his back, his arms and hands.

When the Commandant noticed this he ordered that Simon be flayed

alive. The English Holocaust researchers, the Romanies Donald Kenrick

and Grattan Puxon, describe how Simon’s skin was removed from his

body, treated, and then used to cover the Commandant’s desk. When I

try to imagine the tattooed signs and symbols on that poor man’s skin I

always arrive at the conclusion that the history of my people is in fact

like the skin of that martyr.

To respect the historical truth I also must mention another

incident from the long series of sufferings and sorrow of my people. In a

group of people who Dr. Mengele was conducting experiments on were

two Sinti children, the Mechau brothers. These children were selected

out to suffer for the simple “reason” that, following an interplay of the

laws of genetics, each had one blue aye and one dark eye - a case of

so-called heterochromia. It is told that Dr. Mengele pulled out the

children's eyes and then killed them single-handedly. The eyes of these

martyrs, which will remain open as long as we exist on this planet, and
OPENING STATEMENTS 51

which I feel are also watching us here at this conference, were sent to the

laboratory of the Ophthalmological Clinic in Berlin.

Ladies and gentlemen,

There is no scale on which to measure the eyes and the screams

of children! Never will there be scales to weigh human skin with tattooed

signs and symbols. There is no gauge for the ashes and the blood of

Auschwitz.

Truth and justice are the only measure of things.

For my people, however, truth and justice have passed us by.

My people did not suffer only under the Nazi Regime – in

various countries Communist dictatorships also took a terrible toll:

Romanies were murdered in the Stalin era in the former USSR; in

Romania under Ceausescu they were brutally persecuted; in former

Czechoslovakia Romani women were forcibly sterilized...A new, dark

chapter in the history of the Romanies began in 1989: there were antiRomani pogroms in Romania; in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia

Romanies were beaten up and killed; in former Yugoslavia there was

suffering on a massive scale, particularly in Bosnia. My people have

gone down in history for their suffering, and only as such. Is survival, its

naked physical existence, bears the imprint of death, suffering and

anguish much more indelibly than it shows any signs of progressive

legislations, social justice or democracy. The historical knowledge about

my people’s past and the facts of its current life stir in me the words of

the Spanish poet Antonio Machado y Ruiz: “Sing him a song, dear

brother/the Gypsy Jesus is still waiting/to have the blood washed from

his hands, to be taken from the cross!”

If it is true that all those who suffer and die for their truth are

united with God and humanity, that they become a cornerstone of the

future building of humanity which after all the anguish and blunders will

finally be erected on earth in keeping with principles of humanity, that

would at least be a consolation to us. We expect of this conference that it

open our people the door to justice. What our people deserves, in keeping

with the laws of historical truth and justice, must be utilized to serve its

progressive activity and social development.

Only those who know the history of the Romanies, who have

studied the Romani community, and who recognize the current

economic, political and social conditions and circumstances which the

Romanies live under in various countries of the world – particularly in

Europe, where the Romanies' Holocaust and that of the Jews began – can

contribute to this process. Whoever neglects these facts and
52 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

circumstances could cause unforeseeable damage to the Romanies and

our community, which in itself is segmentary and is still based on

organic solidarity. A redistribution must therefore be carried out in

harmony with historical awareness and real needs, and must be as fair as

possible. Priority should be given to investments in the Romanies’ future,

above all in the schooling and education of the younger generation;

furthermore, it has to serve the construction of ethnic and cultural

institutions which will guarantee the preservation of the Romanies’

identity but also contribute to our development. Institutions which will

enable us to effectively combat racism in the contemporary world will

also be of significance. Parallel to this, the economic and social problems

of the many Romani families have to be resolved.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Today our people is faced with grave dangers, beginning with

the armed injustice in the former Yugoslavia and Bosnia, the violence

and the threats of the neo-Nazis, and including the fact that it is forced to

live in ghettos, without enough daily bread, which is a negation of every

purposeful existence in this world. Thus for us Romanies the future has

not yet been freed from the past, nor has the past been resolved on the

scale of a humane future; our people has still seen neither victory nor

defeat – we are living proof of the fact that in the countries of both the

victors and the vanquished of the Second World War people are still

tormented and humiliated. Like no other people in the world we have

been left with the burdens of life – all that is hard, meager and cheerless.

Even our children are born, so to speak, with pre-determined dark fates.

Those who deprive our children of the right to a future commit a crime

against our people.

Myself and the members of the International Romani Union’s

Mr. Victor Famulson, Deputy Chair; Dr. Emil Scuka,

General Secretary; Dr. Marcel Cortiade, Secretary; Fredi Hoffmann,

Committee member; the writer Jovan Nikolic, Deputy Chairman of the

Romani PEN-Center; Mr. Böhmer and Mr. Jörg Böcken, representatives

of the Sinti and Romanies in Germany; Ms. Rosa Martl from Austria;

Mr. Robert Huber from Switzerland; Mr. Milorad Vujicic from

Yugoslavia; Mr. Alija Mestic from Croatia; Mr. Stefan Palison from

Sweden; Mr. Zoran Dimov from Macedonia; Mr. Velko Georgiev from

Bulgaria; Mr. Sean Nazareli from the Czech Republic; Mr. Bobu

Nicloae, lawyer, Romania; and our lawyer Mr. Barry Fisher – appeal to

this high and respected conference and request that, in the spirit of

historical truth and justice and in accordance with the word and the
OPENING STATEMENTS 53

notion “holocaust”, it make a contribution towards resolving these

problems, which will allow our dead to rest in peace and will give a sign

of hope to the living, especially our children. Those who feel the

sufferings and misfortune of our people and who sympathize with its

pain will be able to set up standards of justice and fair redistribution

simply and easily. Those, on the other hand, who neither know of nor

understand the Holocaust of our people, who do not want to hear of the

Romanies’ misfortune, will be prepared to walk all over these principles,

our dead, and the future of our people.

Together with the delegates of the International Romani Union I

hope – and am even deeply convinced – that this high and eminent

conference will effectively hinder and repulse any potential attempt of

this kind, whichever quarters it comes from.

In the hope that the memory of the victims of the Holocaust will

live eternally and the hope of the living will never falter, I sincerely

thank you for all your attention.

Opening Statement

Ambassador Alexander Philon

GREECE

HEAD OF DELEGATION

As Under Secretary Eizenstat stated in the First Conference on

Holocaust Era Assets, held here in Washington, it is dispiriting that for

nearly half a century the fate of Holocaust-Era Assets remained largely

obscured, but at the same time it is encouraging that over the last several

years, these issues have come to command the world's attention and

touch the conscience of humanity.

As Head of the Greek Delegation to the London Conference on

Nazi Gold last year, I wish to stress the importance of these forums in

achieving a just solution to these problems. I certainly hope that the

Washington Conference will produce similar results in the form of a

consensus among governments and that it will inform those involved

internationally on the size of the problem and the best ways to deal with

its many different aspects.

We now have the opportunity to see clearly and establish the

facts in an effort to obtain justice.

The Washington Conference is not a forum for government

decision-making. It is a forum in which we will try to identify the

injustices committed in the fields of art, insurance, archives and other

assets during the Nazi occupation.

In this spirit, Greece fully understands and shares the Jewish

drama, especially the one that took place during World War II, when my

country suffered not only loss of innumerable human lives but also

immeasurable economic devastation.

The Nazi occupation resulted in a decrease of about 10% of

Greece's population. It also wrecked the monetary and financial

mechanisms of the country and caused the disintegration of the

administrative system.

In this respect, please allow me to bring to the attention of the

delegates a particular issue concerning Greece.
56 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

During the occupation years, the Axis exacted from Greece

contributions of huge sums of money. In addition to direct monetary

contributions, the Axis also demanded large credits from the Bank of

Greece.

The first "forced loan" protocol was signed in March 1942 and it

was subsequently amended several times during the occupation. In this

protocol, high-ranking officials of the German and Italian Ministries of

Foreign Affairs had undertaken to pay back the loan to the Athens

government and began doing so in 1943, thus recognizing liability to

repay a debt.

We would like to focus upon the fact that the "forced loan"

extracted from Greece was not a part of "regular" occupation costs and

that the claim for repayment of that loan is therefore different in nature

from reparations claims.

With one exception, the Bonn government responded to all war

claims placed and substantiated by countries, after German unification.

These responses constituted either some kind of material compensation

or at least a beginning of negotiations on the claims.

The only exception is Greece.

The full Greek argumentation and documentation on the subject

is contained in a memorandum which is available and which deserves, I

believe and I hope, your attention.

Furthermore, I would like to inform you that on the issues of

education, archives, art and communal assets, members of the Greek

Delegation will intervene in the respective panels.
Stuart E. Eizenstat

UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ECONOMIC, BUSINESS AND

AGRICULTURAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES

Review of Gold Issues, Research and

Resolution

Plenary Session: Review of Gold Issues, Research and Resolution

I want to take this opportunity to thank Bill McDonough for

taking part in this Conference and to acknowledge the critical role of the

Federal Reserve Bank of New York over the past 50 years in dealing

with the restitution of monetary gold looted by Nazi Germany. The New

York Fed was there from the beginning of the process established by the

Allies in 1946 to receive monetary gold on behalf of the Tripartite Gold

Commission and to be the caretaker for this unique “Gold Pool” until the

conflicting claims to the looted gold could be carefully adjudicated. With

the closing down of the Commission in September of this year, the New

York Fed’s remarkable custodianship came to a satisfying conclusion.

Bill McDonough is personally responsible for the extraordinary

contribution the New York Federal Reserve has made over the last two

years to our own country’s explanation of the facts behind the Nazi gold

issue – and I salute him and his colleagues.

The surge of interest over the last several years in the fate of

monetary gold looted by the Nazis in World War II has reopened the

long-neglected record of tragic events of half a century ago and has

thrown new light on its long-hidden dimensions and long-neglected

victims. This recent research has allowed a new, clear understanding of

the origins of looted gold and the uses to which it was applied during the

War. It has also shown the general inability of the international

community to fully grasp or acknowledge until very recently the full

extent of the looting of gold and its horrible misapplication in the support

of the Nazi war effort.
58 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

This unprecedented effort of discovery and rediscovery owes

much of its impetus to the original leadership and initiative of the World

Jewish Congress. In the United States President Clinton and a bipartisan

group in the U.S. Congress, led by Senator D’Amato and Congressman

Leach, urged and insisted on establishing and publishing the facts. The

massive U.S. Government interagency project for reviewing the U.S.

official record and publishing the results in two historical reports,

followed the lead set by the British Government whose Foreign and

Commonwealth Ministry’s chief historian Gill Bennett took the first step

with a path-finding study released in September 1996.

In the course of 1996 and 1997, other governments, those of

nations who were occupied during the War as well as those who

remained neutral or non-belligerent, joined the international effort at

discovery and disclosure. Now there are 17 national commissions, and

other nations are using other approaches to sort through their records.

The redrawn and refocused historical picture of the scale and

nature of Nazi looting of gold is emerging from this enormous body of

recent work. Not all of the Commissions and other national historical

investigations around the world have examined the origins and fate of the

Nazi regime’s gold. Research into the fate of Holocaust victims’ assets in

bank accounts, insurance, real property, art, and other cultural collections

and possessions is still going forward even as we approach a more

complete understanding of the monetary gold question. The painful and

complicated record of Nazi looting of the monetary gold of occupied

Europe was placed before the Tripartite Gold Commission by the United

States, Britain, and France more than 40 years ago.

Let me underline the importance of the opening of the TGC

archives at the French Foreign Ministry in France at the same time as the

U.S., Britain, and France closed out this body. While we do not expect

any surprising revelations from the TGC archives, they will now be

available in their entirety to researchers, historians, and the public at

large. Full transparency and openness when dealing with such historical

records is a responsibility that we must not just accept but welcome.

The extensive wartime gold transactions that sustained the

German war effort until 1945 involving the neutral nations have only

become broadly understood as a result of the hard and dispassionate

work of historians and other experts on the national commissions of

these neutrals. The report of Switzerland’s Independent Commission of

Experts in May 1998 made extensive use of the records of the Swiss

National Bank as well as those of other nations to develop its detailed

and comprehensive picture of the intersection of German gold, however
OPENING STATEMENTS 59

acquired, and the financing of the wartime commerce of the other neutral

nations. The accounts of the wartime banking of their countries by the

Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedish historical commissions, and of the

acquisition of German monetary gold directly from Germany or more

likely through Switzerland, complement the authoritative Swiss report.

The hard and urgent research in the last two years on the part of

the various national historical commissions on wartime gold transactions

has provided a truly international analysis and description. The

Portuguese Commission had provided a full and careful accounting of

the movement of gold through their official agencies during the war. The

Spanish Commission tracked the movement of gold and placed it in a

broad, objective context of Spanish official policy-making. The Swedish

Commission provided a comprehensive account and analysis of Swedish

gold transactions during the War and the efforts through 1955 to resolve

the difficult issues that delayed the final restitution of nearly $20 million

to the TGC. And the remarkable interim report of the Swiss Independent

Commission released last May not only reviewed in great and careful

detail the full range of Swiss gold transactions during the War with the

Axis, the Allies, and the neutrals, but it courageously confronted the

awareness of the government, the Swiss National Bank, and the public as

a whole of the nature and significance of these dealings.

Turkish Commission experts have conducted extensive research

in their own records and those of other governments in order to address

their serious concerns about the accuracy of the historical account in the

U.S. reports. In particular, exhaustive examination of Central Bank of

Turkey records accounted in minute detail for all of the monetary gold

acquired by the Bank during the War, without finding any evidence of

looted gold. Research by the Turkish Foreign Ministry has also fully

documented the conviction of Turkish officials at the time of what they

considered the necessity of Turkey’s exports of chromium to Nazi

Germany in 1943 and early 1944, especially after Britain forfeited its

opportunity in 1940 to acquire all of Turkey’s chromium supplies.

Foreign Ministry research also reviewed Turkey’s orderly settlement of

German wartime assets issues directly with the Federal Republic of

Germany in the 1950s.

The impressive research of these commissions, together with the

concurrent and converging work done by our two U.S. interagency

reports of May 1997 and June 1998 as well as the pioneering British

reports, demonstrate both the complexity of the unfinished task of 50

years ago and also the great results that come from working together

toward a common and deserved goal. I will not claim that all research on
60 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

the fate of looted gold is finished. Not every conceivable question was

asked by the researchers, and differences among the various national

reports indicate other areas for further careful study in order, as Foreign

Secretary Cook put it last year, to “recreate the jigsaw.” I think we can

all agree, however, on many of the major areas of consensus established

by the recent work of so many of the commissions represented here

today.

First, there is now general understanding and agreement on the

scale of the Nazi looting of gold from occupied Europe, both from

central banks and from individual victims. Moreover, our commissions

have cumulatively demonstrated that the Nazi regime used this loot

deliberately and ruthlessly to finance its acquisition of supplies essential

to its capacity to wage war. The research of the various commissions and

the review of our U.S. records have confirmed the nature and scale of

German looted gold in financing this crucial wartime trade. The Swiss

Independent Commission put the total amount of looted gold transferred

to or through Switzerland during the War at around $444 million (almost

$4 billion in today’s values). The Commission’s report also estimated

that about $82 million of the total Reichsbank gold holdings during the

War was taken from individuals, some $700 million in today’s values,

including $2.9 million ($25 million today), from Nazi victims.

Second, in the light of the results of this research – not least of

all by the Swiss Independent Commission but also by the work of the

Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, as well as the U.S. and British reports –

the central role of Swiss institutions, especially the Swiss National Bank,

in managing the financing and facilitating wartime commerce in Europe

by receiving Nazi-looted gold and converting it to hard currencies is now

fully established and accepted. As Dr. Berger, in his preface to the Swiss

Independent Commission report, expressed it best: “Switzerland lay at

the heart of the gold transactions.”

Third, the considerable evidence in the U.S. reports and the

comprehensive review of victim gold in the report of the Swiss

Independent Commission leave no doubt of the considerable scale and

the barbarous nature of the Nazi theft of gold stolen from concentration

camp victims and its addition to the gold reserves that the Reichsbank

used to finance the Nazi war effort. The full amount of stolen victim gold

that was incorporated into the Reichsbank holdings – from the Swiss

Independent Commission estimate of $2.9 million ($25 million in

today’s values) to the U.S. estimate of $4.6 million ($40.5 million in

today’s values) – may never be known. Despite a thorough search in both

German and U.S. archives, the records of the Precious Metals
OPENING STATEMENTS 61

Department at the Reichsbank have not been found, making it impossible

to document completely the extent and disposition of the infamous

Melmer account at the Reichsbank, into which the SS put the gold they

stole from their victims, largely Jewish as well as many Romani,

including dental fillings. A recent effort by the German Government was

unable to locate records of the Melmer account, which were either

destroyed or lost at some point after the conclusion of World War II.

Fourth, after the War, the Allied nations, especially the three

major powers – the U.S., Britain, and France – fully intended to regain as

much of the looted gold as possible and restitute it to the liberated

nations of Europe. But it has become painfully clear that the Allies fell

far short of recovering from the neutral states all the looted gold they

were able to identify. Of the more than $550 million of looted gold that

the neutral nations of Europe, including Switzerland, received, only $78

million was turned over to the monetary gold pool at the Tripartite Gold

Commission. Likewise, of the estimated $722 million in German

external assets located in Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden at

the end of the War, only about $128 million was liquidated for the

benefit of the Allies and the reconstruction of war-torn Europe. This

resulted from a combination of the change of priorities on the part of the

Allies as they concentrated on the new threats imposed by the onset of

the Cold War, as well as the intransigent negotiating positions taken by

the wartime neutrals.

Fifth, despite the Allies’ shortcomings in recovering looted gold,

they worked through the Tripartite Gold Commission in one of the more

determined and selfless actions of the postwar period. By 1959, more

than 336 tons of gold was assembled, and the Tripartite Gold

Commission was able to meet 64 percent of the validated claims of the

countries from which the gold was taken, restoring the gold to its rightful

owners without benefit to the Allies. In addition, agreement was

ultimately reached in 1998 to apply the great bulk of the approximately 6

tons of remaining undistributed gold to the unmet needs of the dwindling

number of surviving victims of the Nazis. This was based on moral

grounds and on the factual determination in the 1997 U.S. Government

report, demonstrating that some portion of the looted Nazi gold

inadvertently included victim gold, which was swept up with monetary

gold and returned to the claimant countries by the TGC.

These contributions funded the Nazi Persecutee Relief Fund,

created by the U.S., France, and Britain at the 1997 London Conference

to provide resources for the relief of needy victims of Nazi persecution

who to date have received very little or no compensation. It is immensely
62 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

satisfying to report that so far 15 nations – 10 TGC claimant countries

and 5 non-claimant countries – have pledged $58.5 million to the Fund.

Most of the TGC recipient countries have also pledged to contribute all

or a part of their final shares to the Fund, with the remainder going to

victim relief within their own countries. I am especially proud to be able

to say that the United States has now contributed $4 million and has

pledged an additional $21 million over the next three years.

CONCLUSION

I close these remarks by paying tribute to the magnificent efforts

of France and Britain, our TGC partners, in working to close out the

Commission’s work after half a century of effort to bring its efforts to a

just conclusion and in establishing the Nazi Persecutee Relief Fund. I

look forward to hearing their reports during the balance of this session.
Ambassador Louis Amigues

DIRECTOR OF ARCHIVES AND DOCUMENTATION, MINISTRY OF FOREIGN

AFFAIRS

FRANCE

The Closing of the Tripartite Commission for

the Restitution of Monetary Gold

Plenary Session: Review of Gold Issues, Research and Resolution

On September 9, the three governments charged with

administering the Tripartite Commission for the restitution of monetary

gold officially announced their dissolution in Paris, thus legally and

symbolically ending a complex historic process begun after the Second

World War.

The Paris Accords of January 14, 1946 on reparations assigned

the American, British and French governments to return to the countries

the despoiled monetary gold that was put in their Central Banks by the

Nazi regime. Accordingly, on September 27, 1946, these three

governments created in Brussels the Tripartite Commission for the

restitution of monetary gold.

Its task was to compile petitions from despoiled countries, give

these claims a ruling, and proceed to the distribution of monetary gold,

based on a collective amount gathered before the Commission was

created. This amount reached 336.5 tons.

The Tripartite Commission defined the monetary gold as

follows:

"Any gold, which at the time of despoiling or

illegitimate transfer, belonged to the petitioning

country's monetary reserve, whether in the accounts of

the petitioning country itself, or in the accounts of the

petitioning country's Central Bank, or any other financial

institution within or outside its borders."
64 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Eleven countries filed petitions with the Tripartite Commission:

Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg,

the Netherlands, Poland, and Yugoslavia. The petitions validated by the

Tripartite Commission claimed about 514 tons of gold.

To answer the eligible countries urgent reconstruction needs, a

preliminary distribution was effectuated between 1947 and 1950. About

80% of the gold available was distributed during that period, and the

Commission displayed a remarkable speed, given the complexity of such

a procedure.

After that, the restitution process continued at a more regular

pace. A second distribution, described as "quasi-final," took place

between 1958 and 1959 for the majority of eligible countries, however

some of them did not receive their share until legal issues had been

settled: The Netherlands in 1973, Poland in 1976, Czechoslovakia in

1982, and Albania in October 1996. At that time, only 5.5 tons of gold

remained for distribution.

In the fall of 1996, a few representative organizations questioned

this mechanism, and in parallel, offered for the victims of the nazi regime

to be compensated.

Keeping this in mind while continuing to work on the mandate

of the Paris Accords, the member governments of the Tripartite

Commission decided to temporarily defer the distribution of the

remaining gold, and began a historic research. This was notably the case

for the United States (resulting in the "Eizenstat" report, released in April

97) and Great Britain (resulting in the Foreign Office Historic Notes,

released at the same time). These countries had kept documentation from

the years of war. Investigations revealed that an undisclosed, but not

significant, amount of non-monetary gold could have been included in

the amount of gold entrusted to the Tripartite Commission.

On June 27, 1997, in an effort of transparency and truth, the

three governments decided to notify the eligible countries of this

situation. To materialize these steps and help with considerations, two

diplomatic notes were sent to the concerned countries:

• The first, signed by the Tripartite Commission, informed them

that distribution of the remaining gold was to take place;

• The second, signed by the three governments, disclosed

previously mentioned issues, inviting all eligible countries to

draw the practical consequences from it. This verbal note listed

various possibilities for making a contribution, inspired by the

duty of equity and memory.
OPENING STATEMENTS 65

Among the options contemplated, it was suggested that an

International Fund for compensating the victims of Nazi persecution

should be financed. This Fund was implemented at the London

Conference in December 1997. Open to the contributions from countries

aspiring to join an action of justice and international solidarity, it

gathered over the course of a year numerous and large contributions. My

British colleague will tell you about the generous collections in this

Fund.

For its part, the French government has decided to contribute as

much as FF 20 million (about $3.5 million) to express the international

solidarity of France toward the victims of this tragic period.

This amount was included in the 1999 budget plan, and approved

by the Parliament on November 18. It will be available as early as

January 1, 1999.

One of the initial objectives of this Fund was to help the "double

victims" of Nazi persecutions who, up until now, have been deprived

from any compensation. In addition, the first results of an investigation

made by the "Study Mission of the despoiling against the Jews of

France" remind that, before the war, France had welcomed many

refugees from Central and Eastern Europe, who were the first victims of

the persecution and despoiling perpetrated by the Nazis during the

occupation.

It is under these circumstances that, in the allocation of its

contribution, the French government wished to aid the international

Non-Governmental Organizations leading indisputable activities in

Central and Eastern European countries. The sums contributed in this

framework should, inasmuch as possible, first be used to rescue the

members of communities that are faced with the greatest material

hardships.

The Tripartite Commission thus completed its duties in a

general consensus. During the first half of 1998, the eligible countries

received the 5.5 tons of remaining gold owed to them, except for the

countries that belonged to the Former Yugoslavia, whose part remains

frozen until a treaty of State succession is signed.

The Tripartite Commission fulfilled its mission, and ended its

work on September 9 in Paris. It submitted its final report to the three

governments. This report was also presented on that same day to the

representatives of the eligible countries. At this occasion, France, the

United Kingdom and the United States released two joint statements:

the first concerns the dissolution of the Tripartite Commission, and
66 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

the second pertains to the conservation and the transmission of its

archives.

Indeed, in accordance with the commitment made and

reaffirmed in the London Conference, the complete archives of the

Tripartite Commission are now stored at the Foreign Ministry in

Paris, and were made available to the public and to researchers.

This desire for transparency is in keeping with two efforts:

historic truth and the duty of memory. As far as the French

government is concerned, it will continue to abide by these two

obligations.
Mr. Anthony Layden

HEAD, WESTERN EUROPEAN DEPARTMENT, FOREIGN AND

COMMONWEALTH OFFICE

UNITED KINGDOM

The International Fund for Needy Victims of

Nazi Persecution

Plenary Session: Review of Gold Issues, History and Research

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FUND

Chairman, distinguished Delegates

1. In his message to this Conference, the Foreign Secretary,

Robin Cook, recalled his announcement at the London Conference a year

ago that a new International Fund had been set up to assist needy

surviving victims of Nazi persecution, and to fund related educational

projects. This followed earlier discussions between the member countries

of the Tripartite Gold Commission and the countries due to receive

shares of the remaining gold in its monetary gold pool. The three

Commission member countries - France, the United Kingdom and the

United States - had invited the recipient countries to contribute all or part

of the value of the gold they were to receive to this Fund. The Fund was

also open to contributions from other countries.

2. The Fund was set up in such a way as to minimize

bureaucratic procedures. It takes the form of an Agreement between the

Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where the Fund's account is located,

and the British Government as Account Holder. Briefly, donor

governments pay their contributions directly into the Fund Account, and

specify to which non-governmental organizations they wish to allocate

the money, on the basis of proposals made directly to them by the

organizations. The Bank then transfers the money to the specified

organizations.
68 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

3. In the course of these transactions, donor governments

and recipient organizations signal their acceptance of the Fund's Terms

of Reference, which describe in a general way the purposes for which

contributions are to be used. There is no central auditing mechanism: it is

left to donors to satisfy themselves that their contributions are used for

the purposes they intend. Thanks to the agreement of the Federal Reserve

Bank not to levy charges for operating the Account, no running costs of

any kind are incurred in the working of the Fund. There are no legal or

accountants' fees. All of the money contributed by donor governments

goes to the NGOs, and through them to the victims.

CONTRIBUTIONS PROMISED UP TO 19 NOVEMBER 1998

4. During the London Conference, seven delegations

announced that their governments intended to contribute to the Fund,

subject, in some cases, to legal or other procedures. These were

Argentina, Austria, Croatia, Greece, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom

and the United States. Three further delegations - those of France, the

Netherlands and Poland - said contributions by their governments might

be considered.

5. Since the end of the London Conference, contributions

by France, the Netherlands and Poland have been confirmed, and five

further governments have announced their intention to contribute:

Belgium, the Czech Republic, Italy, the Slovak Republic and Sweden.

This means that with only two exceptions, all of the countries sharing in

the final distribution of the Tripartite Commission's gold pool have

responded positively to the suggestion by the Commission member

countries that they contribute to the Fund. Five other countries have also

decided to do so, and I am aware of three others who are actively

considering contributions.

6. The two exceptions mentioned above are Albania and

the former Yugoslavia. The Albanian Government has from the outset

given strong and welcome support to the Fund process, but made it clear

that the serious economic situation in Albania was likely to prevent them

from making a contribution. The successor states of the former

Yugoslavia have not yet agreed on the division between them of assets of

that country. Therefore, when the Tripartite Commission was wound up,

the gold due to Yugoslavia was retained in its existing account at the

Bank of England. One successor state, Croatia, undertook as soon as the

Fund was launched to contribute to it its share of the gold pool, whatever
OPENING STATEMENTS 69

that might be. It has been suggested to the other successor states that if

they were all to make similar undertakings, the value of this gold could

be made available to the Fund in advance of agreement on the wider

question of dividing Yugoslav assets. We await responses. This

morning we have been told by Ambassador Rupel, the leader of the

Slovenian delegation that Slovenia has also decided to contribute its

share of the remaining TGC gold to the Fund. We welcome this

decision.

7. Not all donor governments have yet specified the

amounts they will contribute, but the amounts specified up to the 19th of

November, when a review meeting of donor countries was held in

London, total $59.6 million - almost exactly the value of the gold which

was in the Tripartite Commission's pool at the time the Fund was

launched. It is already clear that the final total will considerably exceed

this sum.

PAYMENTS MADE TO THE FUND ACCOUNT

8. Up to the 19th of November, five donor countries had

made payments into the Fund Account at the Federal Reserve Bank, as

follows:

27 March 1998 United Kingdom $1,647,000

23 June Sweden $1,014,055

10 & 17 July, 13 October Poland $366,615

24 September Czech Republic $162,012

23 October United States $4,000,000

ALLOCATIONS FROM THE FUND ACCOUNT

9. The Federal Reserve Bank made the first disbursements

from the Fund Account on the 22nd of July 1998, in accordance with an

Allocation Instruction from the United Kingdom. Two payments each of

$139,750 were made. One was to the Board of Deputies of British Jews;

the other was paid into an account opened for the purpose by the World

Jewish Restitution Organization, from which it was transferred to the

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. A further disbursement

of $431,505 was made on the 24th of August 1998, in accordance with

an Accelerated Allocation Instruction from the United Kingdom, again to

the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
70 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

10. The balance of principal and interest in the Fund

Account on the 16th of November 1998 was $6,595,667.

SELECTION OF RECIPIENT NON-GOVERNMENTAL

ORGANIZATIONS

11. The British Government began consultations with NGOs

about the allocation of its contribution of 1 million pounds announced by

the Foreign Secretary at the London Conference, immediately after that

event. We decided to allocate one-third of the amount to the Board of

Deputies of British Jews, who had made a proposal to form a committee

of a number of separate organizations working with surviving victims in

the UK, and make cash grants to victims with particular needs.

12. The remaining two-thirds of the UK contribution was

allocated to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC),

who proposed to use it for medicines and medical equipment, to be

provided to victims in Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine through

community organizations (hesedim) in that region. After presentations

from the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) and the

Conference on Jewish Material Claims, who wished to be associated

with this activity, it was agreed that this portion of the UK contribution

would be paid into an account opened for the purpose by the WJRO,

from which it would be transferred immediately to an AJJDC account.

This arrangement, for which the Fund Agreement provides, has worked

satisfactorily.

13. It is understood that an Austrian contribution of about

$8.6 million is likely to be paid into the Fund Account soon, and will

probably be allocated to the Austrian National Fund for Victims of

National Socialism. The Czech Republic contribution mentioned earlier

will be allocated to two NGOs in the Republic, the Union of Freedom

Fighters and the Union of Forced Laborers. An Italian contribution of

about $7.2 million is likely to be paid into the Account soon, and to be

allocated to the Union of Italian Jewish Committees. The Swedish

contribution mentioned earlier is to be allocated in equal shares to the

European Jewish Congress, the Jewish Central Committee of Sweden,

and the Swedish Red Cross (for Romani victims). A total of 17 NGOs

have so far been designated by donors as Fund recipients.

14. A number of countries are ready to make contributions

or allocations, but are awaiting detailed proposals from the NGOs they

have selected. Indeed, it emerged at the London review meeting
OPENING STATEMENTS 71

mentioned earlier that up to the present, there has always been more

money available in the Fund Account than there were proposals from

NGOs for its use. NGOs represented at this Conference are therefore

urged to respond as quickly as possible when invited by donor

governments to submit proposals for Fund allocations.

15. In a few cases, the British Government as Account

Holder has had difficulty in contacting NGOs selected by donors as

recipients of allocations, and in obtaining from them their written

agreement to the Fund Terms of Reference, as required by the

Agreement. Again, NGOs are urged to respond quickly when asked by

us to sign and return copies of the Terms of Reference. We shall be glad

to offer help or advice about the operation of the Fund to anyone who

needs it.

HELP SO FAR GIVEN TO VICTIMS

16. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has made

payments of 400 pounds each to 600 Jewish and non-Jewish applicants

in the UK who applied up to June 1998. The Board is now arranging

payments in respect of 166 applications received between July and

September. It has approved 100 applications received since then, and

estimate that the total may approach 1000 by the end of the year, when a

cut-off date has been set.

17. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has

informed us in a preliminary report that between July and September this

year it deployed the portion of their allocation disbursed on 22 July to

supply medicines to more than 14,500 elderly Nazi victims in 55 cities

and towns in Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine, and to provide

4,120 items of medical rehabilitative equipment to recipients in 106

cities and towns in the same region. The program continues.

CONCLUSION

18. Chairman and distinguished delegates, I am conscious as

I come to the end of this presentation that a great deal more remains to be

done to discharge effectively the duty Robin Cook suggested in London

last year that the international community owed to surviving victims of

Nazi persecution. He said: "...we must ensure that the unbearable tragedy

of living through the Holocaust is not compounded by an old age marked

by the fear and sadness of poverty." We are still a long way from
72 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

ensuring that. But a start has been made. The machinery of the

International Fund is in place. Help has begun to flow to those who need

it most. And the pace of that flow will accelerate rapidly from now on.

19. Chairman, I wish to pay tribute to all those who have

worked together in this enterprise. When we began it the difficulties

seemed immense. The legal and moral obligation on the Tripartite

partners to convey the remaining gold to the designated recipient

countries was clear. It was also clear that somehow in the process of

ending our long stewardship of the monetary gold pool we must find a

way of helping needy individual survivors. As always happens in such

cases, each country - and we are a diverse group - responded to the

challenge in its own way. Each was subject to different pressures and

influences. And many different approaches to the situation were put

forward. NGOs too had many different ideas about what should be done.

20. Throughout the complicated discussions that took place

in Brussels, Paris, Washington and other capitals all participants showed

consistent flexibility, goodwill, and a shared determination not to let

differences of perception and approach prevent us from meeting a need

that we all saw as both highly important and extremely urgent. The

International Fund was the outcome: together we have made it work and

together we shall ensure that it completes the job we designed it to do.

Robin Cook described this as "an imaginative and successful piece of

modern diplomacy," and so of course it is. For me, it has also been one

of the most worthwhile and rewarding tasks I have been engaged in. I

am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for entrusting me with it. And I am

grateful to my colleagues, diplomatic and non-governmental, in France,

the United States and the other countries present here, for their unfailing

co-operation and friendship.

Thank you all very much.
Mr. Edgar Bronfman

PRESIDENT

WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS/WORLD JEWISH

RESTITUTION ORGANIZATION

Address at the Conference

History, in its own cruel fashion, has imposed a heavy burden on

all of us gathered here. It is this realization that must guide our

deliberations and actions during the period of the Conference. A burden

can weigh you down, or it can challenge you to rise to the demands that

it imposes. From this understanding comes the stark comprehension that

we are not here to talk about money or art or insurance policies; we have

come together to express the moral imperative that justice must prevail,

that truth must be expounded, and that we have committed ourselves to

the higher values of integrity – to preserve the memory of those who

were victims of unspeakable crimes.

The cliché that we should learn the lessons of history and not

repeat the mistakes is particularly apt here. Conferences are all too often

a cheap substitute for coming to grips with the substantive nature of the

issues they were called to deal with. When the Jewish people were faced

with annihilation during the Second World War, the United States and

Britain convened the 1943 Bermuda conference, ostensibly to find a

solution for wartime refugees. In fact that conference was a sham and

actually was an effort to thwart the rescue of European Jewry. This

conference must be different or the judgment of history will harshly

condemn us.

On innumerable occasions I have sought to describe the goals we

are seeking to achieve as being "moral and material restitution."

Clearly in the last several years, and indeed since our last

international conference in London, marked progress has been made.

There have been notable achievements in the effort to secure material

restitution: the fund established in London arising from the remaining

gold in the TGC; the settlements with Swiss banks and the earlier

commitment by Swiss banks and industry, which created an important

humanitarian fund; expansion of benefits to Holocaust survivors within

the context of ongoing German reparation payments – particularly as

they apply to Eastern European victims; an agreement by major
74 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

European insurance companies to resolve unpaid claims through the

mechanism of the International Commission established for that purpose.

One particularly shining example should be cited, that of

Norway. The government not only established an historical commission

of inquiry and approved monies for compensation, but even more

movingly sought to underline the moral dimensions of the issue by

adopting the minority position of the commission that it had established;

the Norwegian example is a lesson for all – combining the twin

principles of moral and material restitution.

In so far as material restitution is concerned, I appeal to those

governments and institutions and experts that are gathered here; do not

allow this to become a Bermuda conference. We must come away from

this meeting with practical and immediate proposals to secure justified

financial compensation for those who have been so long denied, and we

must establish an ongoing mechanism to verify that governments and

institutions are taking these practical steps. This effort must not end with

this conference.

In some ways the struggle for moral restitution may be more

difficult. It involves what we call in Hebrew "heshbon nefesh” –

searching of the soul. This is not a challenge only to the neutral

countries; this is a challenge which must be confronted by the Allies, the

former Axis states, the bystanders, the churches, industrial concerns,

bankers and Jewish people.

Our inescapable obligation is to set forth the record of events as

they happened, without embellishment, without self-serving alteration,

and with brutal honesty. We owe this first and most of all to the memory

of the victims, because that is what we are striving to achieve – the

preservation of memory and the power of its piercing truthfulness.

For those nations and those peoples, or those institutions for

which the critical examination of this historic period will give rise to

dark moments of unpleasant realities, the answer is – there is no choice.

We cannot know where to go or where we are going, unless we know

where we have come from. And foundations built on gossamer evasions

cannot support the pressing weight of historical accuracy.

But as painful as the process may be, the other lesson that history

has taught us is that the struggle to honestly come to terms with the past

makes us stronger – spiritually and intellectually – in the long run.

This then is the ultimate irony. The process that causes us so

much pain also provides us with purification and the strength of

conscience to face our children and future generations.
OPENING STATEMENTS 75

I appeal to you therefore to act – and not merely to deliberate –

in a manner which measures up to the historical task before us. If we fail

to do so in this, the last minute of this dying century, we will be

reproached not only by the victims of the crime but by our own children.

Let us therefore dedicate ourselves to overcome whatever obstacle to

reach that level of action and honesty that will allow the peoples of the

42 nations represented here – and more importantly their children – to

say the struggle for memory was validated here.

Ms. Nili Arad

DIRECTOR-GENERAL, MINISTRY OF JUSTICE

ISRAEL

Address at the National Archives

Thank you, Mr. Carlin.

Distinguished fellow delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen:

"Almost a Love Poem"

"If my parents and your parents

hadn't migrated to Eretz Yisrael in 1936,

we would have met in 1944

there on the platform at Auschwitz.

I at twenty,

and you, at five.

Where's Mammele?

Where's Tattele?

What's your name?

Hannale."

written by Yehuda Amichai,

an outstanding Israeli poet.

That is how we have grown up in Israel since the Holocaust,

where the shadow of our extinguished families has become part of our

personal history. Striving to build a safe haven for Jews all over the

world, we took the pledge Never to Forget; Always to remember.

In the past two days, we have felt that this promise has touched

each of you. It has become the goal of us all, representatives of different
countries, non-govern mental organizations, insurance companies,

private agencies, Jews and non-Jews alike.

The holistic understanding and agreement on which we are all

focussing here is not about material possessions – but about historical

Justice. Justice long due to the families, to real people who were stripped

of their human dignity, robbed of their pride, dispossessed of their

property, uprooted from their homes and finally systematically murdered

by the most brutal methods.

We are not seeking justice for crimes of war, nor the restitution

of the improperly acquired spoils of war. Rather, we are talking about the

Holocaust – the Nazi's program of unspeakable human suffering and

physical devastation inflicted upon the Jewish people and unmatched in

history.

Now, we are building an international consensus for justice that

goes far beyond the question of identifying stolen assets and returning

them to their rightful owners.

We today must reach a higher moral ground, to ensure the

memory of those who perished, the acknowledgement and preservation

of the history of their fate, the culture and public institutions of the

devastated Jewish communities of Europe, endeavoring to ensure that the

survivors of these great communities live in comfort and dignity.

Indeed the result of our deliberations is the recognition of an

urgent need to proceed with the efforts to give life to the mute pages in

archives; to reveal the identities of the unknown people in yet

unpublished lists. To ensure free access to all knowledge and information

essential to the establishment of justice. In the words of the esteemed

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis:

"Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant,

electric light the most efficient policeman."

We leave this Conference heartened and encouraged, convinced

that we are, indeed, part of a worldwide consensus dedicated to the

relentless pursuit of justice in the various areas where justice was denied.

Throughout the intensive and enlightening discussions of the last

two days, we have been moved – and very much aware – of the great

historical nature and significance of this gathering.

At the closing of the twentieth century, on the threshold of a new

era, let all people of goodwill join together in pursuit of the noble goals

which we have set for ourselves.
OPENING STATEMENTS 79

Together we spoke of them in London; we speak of them again

here in Washington. Let us vow to continue our united effort to

strengthen the hands of those who dedicate themselves to the

achievement of justice, and to those who strive to further the principles

of human dignity and the freedom of mankind. Thank you.