Opinion ID: 3031377
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: The events at issue relate back to the actions of the Vatican during and in the years following World War II.2 Following Germany’s blitzkrieg through Yugoslavia in 1941, a government composed of members of the Ustasha was proclaimed the head of a protectorate of Italy. See Ustasha Treasury Report3 at 141. The Ustasha regime was supported throughout World War II by German and Italian occupation forces. Id. 2 Regarding terminology, the Vatican City and the Holy See are closely related but not interchangeable entities: The term “Holy See” refers to the composite of the authority, jurisdiction, and sovereignty vested in the Pope and his advisers to direct the worldwide Roman Catholic Church. . . . Created in 1929 to provide a territorial identity for the Holy See in Rome, the State of the Vatican City is a recognized national territory under international law. The Holy See, however, enters into international agreements and receives and sends diplomatic representatives. See U.S. Dep’t of State, Background Note: The Holy See (Oct. 2004), available at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3819.htm (“Vatican Background Note”). See generally Robert John Araujo, The International Personality and Sovereignty of the Holy See, 50 Cath. U. L. Rev. 291 (2001) (providing historical overview of the Holy See’s foreign relations and arguing that it is a subject of international law). These nuances are not critical for purposes of this opinion. Therefore, for convenience, the term “Vatican” will be used to refer generally to the Catholic leadership centered in the Vatican City. 3 In the late 1990s, the U.S. Government prepared a report on the Ustasha wartime treasury as part of a larger effort “to confront the largely hidden history of Holocaust-related assets after five decades of neglect.” Bureau of Public Affairs, U.S. Dep’t of State, Pub. No. 10557, U.S. Allied Wartime and Postwar Relations and Negotiations With Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey on Looted Gold and German External Assets and U.S. Concerns About the Fate of the Wartime Ustasha Treasury, Supplement to the Preliminary Study on U.S. and Allied Efforts to Recover and Restore Gold and Other Assets Stolen or Hidden by Germany During World War II iii (1998) (“Ustasha Treasury Report”). ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK 4269 Although the United States and its allies were aware to some extent of the Ustasha’s atrocities, “It is not clear if the Allied leaders clearly grasped that as many as 700,000 victims, most of them Serbs, had been killed at the Ustasha death camps . . . .” Id. at 142. The State Department’s report describes the Vatican’s role in less generous terms: “The Vatican, which maintained an ‘Apostolic visitor’ in Zagreb from June 1941 until the end of the War, was aware of the killing campaign . . . . Croatian Catholic authorities condemned the atrocities committed by the Ustashi, but remained otherwise supportive of the regime.” Id. at 143. The connections between the Vatican and the Ustasha reportedly continued in the years following World War II: With the defeat in May 1945 of Hitler and his satel- lites, including puppet Croatia, the leaders of the Ustasha fled to Italy, where they found sanctuary at the pontifical College of San Girolamo in Rome. This College was most likely funded at least in part by the remnants of the Ustasha treasury, and appeared to operate with at least the tacit acquiescence of some Vatican officials. Id. at xviii. It is unclear to what extent the Vatican was aware of these activities, but the State Department is dubious that they were oblivious to the Ustasha’s presence: Although no evidence has been found to directly implicate the Pope or his advisers in the postwar activities of the Ustasha in Italy, it seems unlikely that they were entirely unaware of what was going on. Vatican authorities have told us they have not found any records that could shed light on the Ustasha gold question. Id. at 156. 4270 ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK The size and nature of the Ustasha treasury remains in considerable doubt. According to the State Department, “The figure of 350 million Swiss francs (over $80 million) of Ustasha gold that U.S. intelligence reported in 1946 remains the only attempt to estimate the total financial resources available to the Ustashi at the end of World War II.” Id. at 150. The State Department cautions that this estimate “remains unsubstantiated and may not include some or all of the sums reported elsewhere.” Id.
This background section on the claims is drawn from the Holocaust Survivors’ Third Amended Class Action Complaint (the “Complaint”), which is detailed and lengthy and references a number of outside sources, such as the Ustasha Treasury Report. At this stage of the proceedings, we accept the allegations as true. See California v. United States, 104 F.3d 1086, 1089 (9th Cir. 1997) (when reviewing a district court’s grant of a motion to dismiss, this court accepts the facts alleged in the complaint as true).
The Complaint was filed on behalf of the named plaintiffs and the following class: [A]ll Serbs, Jews, and former Soviet Union citizens (and their heirs and beneficiaries), who suffered physical, monetary and/or property losses including slave labor, due to the systematic and brutal extermination of Jews, Serbs, and Romani by the [Ustasha], and as a result of the occupation of the former Soviet Union by Croatian military forces in concert with their German occupation forces. The potential class is massive: Plaintiff Ukrainian Union of Nazi Victims And Prisoners “represents over 300,000 former ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK 4271 slave and forced laborers, prisoners, concentration camp, and ghetto survivors.” The geographic scope of the class is also far reaching with the Ustasha’s destruction extending beyond Croatia to Bosnia, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The jurisdictional bases of the Holocaust Survivors’ claims are similarly expansive. They claim jurisdiction pursuant to the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (“ATS”), the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1605 (“FSIA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1331, federal common law as it incorporates customary international law and treaties, diversity jurisdiction, and California state law.4 4 The viability of the Holocaust Survivors’ claims apart from the issue of the political question doctrine is not before us. Nevertheless, looking ahead, we note that the statutory grounds on which the Holocaust Survivors base their claims have, for the most part, not fared well in recent litigation. Just last term, the Supreme Court limited the ATS in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 124 S. Ct. 2739, 2764 (2004) (curtailing the scope of actionable international norms under the ATS but explaining that “the door is still ajar subject to vigilant doorkeeping”); see also Weiss v. Am. Jewish Comm., 335 F. Supp. 2d 469 (S.D.N.Y. 2004) (dismissing claim under the ATS for injunctive relief in connection with the construction of a Holocaust memorial in light of the Court’s holding in Sosa). The contours of the FSIA have also changed with the Supreme Court’s holding in Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U.S. 677, 124 S. Ct. 2240 (2004), that the FSIA applies retroactively. See also Abrams v. Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais, 389 F.3d 61, 64-65 (2d Cir. 2004) (dismissing case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because the French government’s acquisition of defendant railroad company immunized it from suit under the FSIA). In Deutsch v. Turner Corp., 324 F.3d 692, 719 (9th Cir. 2003), we held that a California statute on which the Holocaust Survivors’ claims are based in part, Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 354.6, unconstitutionally intruded on the foreign affairs power of the federal government. We leave the district court to determine in the first instance to what extent the Holocaust Survivors have correctly invoked these and other jurisdictional bases. 4272 ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK
The Complaint does not name the Vatican itself as a defendant but rather focuses on a closely related entity, the Vatican Bank.5 The exact relationship between the Vatican and the Vatican Bank is less than clear at this stage of the proceedings. We are in no position to make a substantive judgment about the nature of the Vatican Bank.6 The Complaint, which we accept at face value, distinguishes between the two entities. The Vatican Bank has its principal place of business in the Vatican City and is headed by a Bishop, but it conducts transactions worldwide including “for-profit merchant banking transactions in the United States, California, and elsewhere.” The actual dealings of the bank, however, are murky. Indeed, the Vatican Bank’s holdings and its specific transactions are opaque. In his declaration in support of the Holocaust Survivors’ motion for early jurisdictional discovery, John Loftus—a former prosecutor with the U.S. Department 5 The Complaint also names “Unknown Catholic Religious Orders,” a number of banking institutions (both named institutions and “Does #1- 100”) and “unknown recipients of Nazi and Ustasha loot” as defendants. The Holocaust Survivors voluntarily dismissed their claims against defendant Swiss National Bank in 2002. 6 Like its other ominous projections, the dissent jumps ahead to conclude that this suit is “functionally” against “the Vatican itself” and “the Vatican Bank, which is an instrumentality of the sovereign state of the Vatican,” and possibly even the Pope. [Dissent at 4318.] But we are nowhere near the point of making such an assessment. Because this case comes to us at the motion to dismiss stage, we must accept the Complaint’s demarcation between the Vatican Bank, which is named as a defendant, and the Vatican, which is not named as a defendant. Further, the potential overtones that this case may have on relations with the Vatican leadership do not, as the dissent suggests, warrant dismissal. See Antolok v. United States, 873 F.2d 369, 392 (D.C. Cir. 1989) (Wald, C.J., concurring in judgment only) (“I read [Baker v. Carr] as a reminder that our focus should be on the particular issue presented for our consideration, not the ancillary effects which our decision may have on political actors.”). ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK 4273 of Justice’s Nazi-hunting unit—attests, “The Vatican Bank is one of the most secretive financial institutions in the world. The exact nature and ownership of the Vatican Bank is difficult to ascertain owing to the secrecy surrounding it.” The bank’s dealings and ownership may be shrouded in mystery, but the Vatican considers itself to have a stake in the outcome of these proceedings. In specific reference to this case, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State sent a Verbal Note of Protest, dated October 23, 2000, to the U.S. Embassy in Rome requesting as follows: Basing itself upon the diplomatic relations which exist between the United States of America and the Holy See, as well as the recognition which the Gov- ernment of the United States has accorded to the sovereignty of the Holy See and of Vatican City State, the Secretariat of State requests the intervention of the Federal Government of the United States of America. The Order of Friars Minor joined the Vatican Bank in bringing the motion to dismiss. A religious brotherhood founded by St. Francis of Assisi, the organization includes “several Croatian Franciscan Orders in California, the United States, Croatia, and Italy.” During World War II, “Many high officials of the Ustasha government were Roman Catholic clergy and, in particular, Franciscans.” These ties continued after the war with the Order of Friars Minor providing aid to former Ustasha. Neither the district court nor the Holocaust Survivors distinguished between the Vatican Bank and Order of Friars Minor in the treatment of the political question doctrine. Likewise, because no distinction can be made on the basis of the pleadings, we also address the two defendants together. For ease of reference, from this point on in the opinion we refer to them collectively as the “Vatican Bank.” 4274 ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK The third defendant, the Croatian Liberation Movement, is identified “as the successor to the Ustasha government.” The Croatian Liberation Movement allegedly “functioned as a government in exile and coordinated terrorist activities in the United States and elsewhere.”
The Complaint describes in detail the atrocities inflicted on the Holocaust Survivors during World War II by the Ustasha and, more generally, by allied Fascists “believed to be Croatians.” In addition to describing the looting of assets, the Complaint recites genocidal acts of the Ustasha, including those carried out at the “Jasenovac Concentration Camp complex, termed by historians as the ‘Auschwitz of the Balkans.’ ” Upon the collapse of the Ustasha regime in 1945, the Holocaust Survivors maintain that “all or a portion of the Ustasha Treasury was transferred to cooperative Roman Catholic clergyman [sic] and Franciscans for transport to Rome where Franciscans sympathetic to the Ustasha were based.” These funds eventually found their way into the hands of the Vatican Bank, among other recipients. As alleged in the Complaint, “A 1948 U.S. Army Intelligence reports [sic] confirmed 2,400 kilos of Ustasha stolen gold were moved from the Vatican to one of the Vatican’s secret Swiss bank accounts.” In the decades following World War II, the Holocaust Survivors contend that the Vatican Bank and the Croatian Liberation Movement continued to profit from transactions involving the Ustasha treasury. Having set forth these general allegations, the Complaint advances five causes of action: Conversion: The Holocaust Survivors first allege, “Defendants . . . have willfully and wrongfully misappropriated and ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK 4275 converted the value of [property taken from the Holocaust Survivors] and its derivative profits into their own property.” Unjust Enrichment: Second, defendants were unjustly enriched by “receiv[ing] stolen property given to them by members of the Ustasha Regime, which rightfully belongs to [the Holocaust Survivors], as well as the value of slave labor performed.” Restitution: The Holocaust Survivors allege in their third claim that their “goods and property have been taken, thus denying [them] the use and enjoyment thereof; Defendants have wrongfully used and profited from that property.” Maintaining that “compensation in damages is inadequate in that the property taken cannot be replaced and the harm inflicted cannot be undone by mere compensation,” the Holocaust Survivors call for “equitable remedies.” Accounting: Fourth, the Holocaust Survivors request “the equitable remedy of accounting,” alleging that “Defendants have never accounted for or paid the value of Plaintiffs’ property or the profits which Defendants have derived from that property, either during World War II or since World War II ended.” Human Rights Violations and Violations of International Law: Finally, the Holocaust Survivors allege: Defendants participated in the activities of the Ustasha Regime in furtherance of the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, torture, rape, starvation, physical and mental abuse, summary execution and genocide. Specifi- cally, the actions and conduct of Defendants, in addition to being profitable, actively assisted the war objectives of the Ustasha Regime. 4276 ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK The Complaint condemns the defendants’ aiding and abetting of war criminals after World War II by helping them to evade prosecution and to preserve the Ustasha treasury. The Holocaust Survivors cite a multitude of legal bases for these claims: “Defendants’ actions were in violation of numerous international treaties and the fundamental human rights laws prohibiting genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. Defendants’ actions violated customary international law . . . .” They also claim that “Defendants committed torts under the laws of the United States, requiring Defendants to pay . . . appropriate compensatory and punitive damages for . . . injuries and losses.”
Our inquiry proceeds from the age-old observation of Chief Justice Marshall that “[q]uestions, in their nature political, or which are, by the constitution and laws, submitted to the executive, can never be made in this court.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 170 (1803). Although the principle behind the political question doctrine was announced over two hundred years ago in Marbury, the Supreme Court has addressed the doctrine in surprisingly few cases. See Atlee v. Laird, 347 F. Supp. 689, 693-703 (E.D. Pa. 1972) (threejudge court), aff’d sub nom. mem., Atlee v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 911 (1973), (detailed “case by case” analysis of the development of the doctrine). [1] In the landmark case of Baker v. Carr, the Supreme Court provided its most comprehensive discussion on the application of the doctrine. Recognizing that the attributes of the political question doctrine “diverge, combine, appear, and disappear in seeming disorderliness” in various settings, the Court set out to illuminate the “contours” of the doctrine. 369 U.S. at 210-11; see also Erwin Chemerinsky, Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies § 2.8.1 (1997) (“In many ways, the political question doctrine is the most confusing of the jusALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK 4277 ticiability doctrines.”). The Court explained that the political question doctrine has its roots in the separation of powers and set forth six formulations for courts to consider in determining whether they should defer a case to the political branches: Prominent on the surface of any case held to involve a political question is found [1] a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or [2] a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or [3] the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or [4] the impossibility of a court’s undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government; or [5] an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made; or [6] the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question. 369 U.S. at 217. [2] Dismissal on the basis of the political question doctrine is appropriate only if one of these formulations is “inextricable” from the case. Id. Although termed as “formulations” in Baker, the plurality in Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267, 124 S. Ct. 1769, 1776 (2004), recently described these criteria as “six independent tests.” But these tests are more discrete in theory than in practice, with the analyses often collapsing into one another. See Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224, 228-29 (1993) (describing interplay between the first and second Baker tests). This overlap is not surprising given the common underlying inquiry of whether the very nature of the question is one that can properly be decided by the judiciary. Addressing foreign affairs specifically, Baker cautioned against “sweeping statements” that imply all questions involv4278 ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK ing foreign relations are political ones. 369 U.S. at 211 (citing Oetjen v. Cent. Leather Co., 246 U.S. 297, 302 (1918) (“The conduct of the foreign relations of our Government is committed by the Constitution to the Executive and Legislative— ‘the political’—Departments of the Government, and the propriety of what may be done in the exercise of this political power is not subject to judicial inquiry or decision.”)). Instead, the Court instructed that courts should undertake a discriminating case-by-case analysis to determine whether the question posed lies beyond judicial cognizance. 369 U.S. at 211. Informing this inquiry are considerations of “the history of [the question’s] management by the political branches,” its “susceptibility to judicial handling,” and “the possible consequences of judicial action.” Id. at 211-12. Despite this caution that it is impossible to decide cases raising the political question doctrine “by any semantic cataloguing,” id. at 217, certain families of cases have emerged in the foreign affairs realm. See, e.g., Japan Whaling Ass’n v. Am. Cetacean Soc’y, 478 U.S. 221, 229-31 (1986) (interpretation of statutes involving foreign affairs is a justiciable question); Goldwater v. Carter, 444 U.S. 996, 1002-04 (1979) (four-justice plurality concluding that a challenge to the President’s unilateral termination of a treaty presents a political question); Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U.S. 160, 168 (1948) (termination of war is a political question); Oetjen, 246 U.S. at 302 (Executive’s recognition of a foreign government is a political question). In general, however, Baker’s admonition has proved true that most cases involving foreign affairs fail to fall neatly into categories on one side or the other of the justiciable/nonjusticiable line. As a result, the overarching Baker tests remain the starting point of our inquiry. Following Baker, the Supreme Court has not retreated from the analytical framework it established. See Vieth, 124 S. Ct. at 1776 (reiterating Baker formulations); Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U.S. 109, 121-27 (1986) (reciting Baker formulations and declining Justice O’Connor’s implicit invitation to rethink ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK 4279 that approach). Subsequent decisions have elaborated on the various criteria. In particular, the Vieth plurality’s observation that the Baker tests “are probably listed in descending order of both importance and certainty,” 124 S. Ct. at 1776, is borne out by the disproportionate emphasis on the first two tests in both Supreme Court and lower court cases. See, e.g., Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 548-49 (1969) (dismissing five Baker formulations as inapplicable in two paragraphs after an extensive discussion of the first test); see also El-Shifa Pharm. Indus. Co. v. United States, 378 F.3d 1346, 1367 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (focusing on first Baker formulation in holding that the Constitution, “in its text and by its structure, commits to the President the power to make extraterritorial enemy property designations”); Made in the USA Found. v. United States, 242 F.3d 1300, 1312-19 (11th Cir. 2001) (briefly addressing “prudential considerations” after analyzing the first and second Baker formulations at length in concluding that the question of what constitutes a treaty is a political question); In re African-American Slave Descendants Litig., 304 F. Supp. 2d 1027, 1056-63 (N.D. Ill. 2004) (discussing first and second Baker formulations extensively in determining that slave reparation claims were not justiciable). But see United States v. Munoz-Flores, 495 U.S. 385, 390-93 (1990) (briefly dismissing other Baker formulations after explaining that mere judicial scrutiny of a congressional enactment does not show a lack of respect for Congress under the fourth Baker formulation). Similarly, the district court in this case addressed only the first and second considerations and found that both counseled in favor of dismissal. Perhaps not surprisingly, our analysis also focuses on the first two considerations because they are the most significant in the face of the specific allegations of the Complaint. Before we proceed to evaluate the Holocaust Survivors’ claims, it is useful to take a short detour through the World War II Holocaust claims cases as they pertain to the political question doctrine. 4280 ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK
II-ERA CLAIMS The late 1990s saw a flurry of legal activity over Holocaust-era claims after years of quietude. See Michael J. Bazyler, Nuremberg in America: Litigating the Holocaust in United States Courts, 34 U. Rich. L. Rev. 1, 19 (2000) (“A total of ten cases involving Holocaust-era claims were filed in the United States between the end of World War II and October 1996, the start of the new era of Holocaust-claim litigation.”).7 The cases break down into several categories: finding of justiciability, finding of no justiciability, and skirting the political question doctrine or not reaching the doctrine. The Eleventh Circuit’s recent decision involving claims against banks falls into the first category. The court held that claims against two German banks that profited from the practice of Aryanization during World War II were not political questions. See Ungaro-Banages v. Dresdner Bank AG, 379 F.3d 1227, 1235-37 (11th Cir. 2004). In contrast, the district court in this case relied heavily on litigation in federal district courts in New Jersey in which the courts determined that various Holocaust claims raised nonjusticiable political questions.8 See Burger-Fischer v. Degussa 7 In addition to Michael Bazyler’s comprehensive review of Holocaustera litigation, Burt Neuborne, counsel to various parties in Holocaust litigation, provides a helpful overview of the path of these cases. See Burt Neuborne, Preliminary Reflections on Aspects of Holocaust-era Litigation in American Courts, 80 Wash. U. L.Q. 795 (2002). 8 The Holocaust Survivors argue that it was improper for the district court to rely on these out-of-circuit district court cases. Although these cases cannot be viewed as precedent, it certainly was not improper for the district court to reference them and consider analogous principles. See Hart v. Massanari, 266 F.3d 1155, 1169 (9th Cir. 2001) (acknowledging practice of considering out-of-circuit cases when ruling on a novel issue of law). The Holocaust Survivors further challenge the use of these cases as improper in light of Deutsch. See 324 F.3d at 713 n.11. In Deutsch, we did not, however, reject the New Jersey cases wholesale but rather criticized the district court for invoking the political question doctrine when all that was required was “the simple application of the requirements of a treaty to which the United States is a party.” Id. ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK 4281 AG, 65 F. Supp. 2d 248 (D.N.J. 1999); Iwanowa v. Ford Motor Co., 67 F. Supp. 2d 424 (D.N.J. 1999).9 Other courts fielding Holocaust-era claims have skirted the political question doctrine. See, e.g., Garb v. Republic of Poland, 72 Fed. Appx. 850, 855 n.1 (2d Cir. 2003), vacated and remanded by 124 S. Ct. 2835 (2004) (cautioning in remanding claims brought by Jews against defendant states and their instrumentalities that the district court’s “necessary factual inquiry should be conducted with appropriate attention to separation-of-powers concerns, inasmuch as the conduct of foreign relations is delegated to the political branches, and the adjudication of claims that risk significant interference with foreign relations policy may raise justiciability concerns”) (citations omitted); Goldstein v. United States, No. 01-0005, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19266 (D.D.C. Apr. 23, 2003) (memorandum opinion) (failing to reach political question doctrine because claims were barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity in suit by Hungarian Jews against the United States for failure to take action to prevent the deaths of Jews during World War II and for recovery of stolen assets); Bodner v. Banque Paribas, 114 F. Supp. 2d 117, 129 n.9 (E.D.N.Y. 2000) (explaining in case alleging French banks had failed to return assets seized during the Holocaust that the political question doctrine was “not even raised by the defendants here and [is] irrelevant to these facts in any event”). Still other courts have not reached the issue because the cases were settled prior to ruling on the defendants’ motions to dismiss. See In re Austrian & German Bank Holocaust Litig., 80 F. Supp. 2d 164 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) (overseeing settle- 9 Following the district courts’ dismissals of Burger-Fischer and Iwanowa, the plaintiffs pursued expedited appeals to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Neuborne, supra note 7, at 815. The appeals were adjourned in light of the impending establishment of a foundation to handle claims against German companies, and the appeals were “ultimately voluntarily dismissed in May 2001 in connection with the establishment of the German Foundation.” Id. 4282 ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK ment proceedings in case against Austrian banks); In re Holocaust Victim Assets Litig., 105 F. Supp. 2d 139 (E.D.N.Y. 2000) (overseeing settlement proceedings in Swiss Bank litigation). With these varied views as a backdrop, we turn to consideration of the Holocaust Survivors’ claims.