--I̢۪m going to link to this story,
but I̢۪m assuming you̢۪ll have to pay to read the whole thing, so be
prepared for extensive quotes.
Reparations for property lost in war is an idea that goes back a long
way. Before we had courts of law, people pretty much just raped and
pillaged to get what they thought they had coming to them, and to add a
little thing best described in euphemistic terms as deterrence
. Nowadays, we have courts and bureaucracies that handle this sort of
thorny issue. But for the Jews who lost property in Germany in WWII,
they have the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, or
Claims Conference (CC) for short. According to The Economist, the CC
was: “Born in 1951, this is the main channel compensation and it has
become a giant: it lists its 2002 revenues as $826m. Of this, $598m
came in (and $590m went out) as direct compensation to Holocaust
survivors: $222m from the German government, $271m from a foundation
set up in 2000 by German companies, and $105m from Swiss banks under a
scheme set up in 1999. But the CC has other roles. After German
reunification, by agreement with the German government, it could claim
“heirless” ex-Jewish properties in the GDR, unless the heirs turned
up with valid claims for them or compensation for them.”
Here’s an example of what they do: “Who did own the two buildings
in ex-communist East Berlin? We do, said a Jewish family in the
mid-1990̢۪s, its members by then scattered to Britain, Israel, and the
United States. First nazified, then nationalized by the German
Democratic Republic, the “buildings” in Strassburgerstrasse and
Georgenkirchstrasse in fact no longer existed: one vanished in the
1939-45 war, the GDR had demolished the other for a road scheme. But
they had once been valuable, and with newly united Germany accepting
responsibility for the Nazi past, as the GDR had not, the family hoped
for compensation. It got a shock.” This shock came from the CC.
“The deadline for individual claims was the end of 1992â€Â¦But the CC
had set up a “goodwill fund,” for latecomersâ€Â¦In vain, after much
argy-bargy, the CC in late 1996 offered {the family}50% compensation,
DM184,187.56 ($122,000), in brisk terms: “Should you not agreeâ€Â¦the
total amount will be given to Jewish welfare organizations for the
benefit of Holocaust victims.” Take it or lose it. The family took
it.”
And it gets even better:
“Arguably, this family was lucky. The CC had at least waived its fee;
and some early claimants with strong cases but unready for a row, faced
offers of 40% or even less, says Netty Gross, a Jerusalem journalist
who has long studied this issue. That need not be unfair: the costs of
researching a cheap property may be the same as for a valuable one. But
these days, the CC offers successful claimants a standard 80%, taking
20% for its own expenses.”
So, basically, they file claims for Jewish owned property in the former
GDR to either receive either restitution, the actual physical return of
the property, which the CC then sells off, or compensation, for which
the overwhelming number of claims was the only option. If you go to
CC̢۪s website, www.claimscon.org you̢۪ll see how their success rate
in the claims procedure flows down to the bottom line. According to
their website,
by the end of 2002, they’d filed 98,997 claims for “real estate and
other business properties as well as certain other unidentified claims.
The German restitution authorities have ruled on 57,324 claims, of
which only 8,278 were approved for the Claims Conference. Of the
remaining properties, 7,158 were approved for the original owners or
heirs of Holocaust victims; 24,054 were determined to not be Jewish
properties; and 17,807 were duplicate claims (e.g. due to changes in
street addresses). Of the 8,278 rulings in favor of the Claims
Conference, restitution (actual return of the property) has been
awarded for 2,810 properties, and compensation ordered in 5,468
properties for which restitution was not possible.” So, the numbers
that I find interesting there are the 8,278, the actual number of
successful CC claims, and 7,158, the number of CC submitted claims
approved for the Holocaust victims and their surviving families. That
would mean there were 1,120 claims approved for the CC by the German
government for which there are no surviving Jewish owners or heirs of
said owners, or the owners simply have not come forward yet to make a
claim, so the CC is taking the property into trust should that happen. 1,120.
That̢۪s a lot of potentially profitable property with potentially no
one being on the receiving end of the profits other than the CC. It̢۪s
like letting the insurance company be your beneficiary on your life
insurance policy if you fail to name one. But, also, keep in mind that
the German government hands the property and the money over to the CC,
so they̢۪re in charge of the disbursements, minus their costs, of course.
They have control. The Economist adds: “Over time, it has sold a good
deal: in 2002, sales and compensations jointly brought it $101m, though
it still got $9m in rents. And the goodwill fund has shared in this:
the CC, which in 1998 invited new applications to the fund by the end
of that year, says it has paid $164m to heirs, and set aside $157m for
pending applications to be decided.”
Ok, so where̢۪s the problem you ask? I can find a few in all of this,
but my first objection would be that the CC never advertises the
information it does have in regards to unclaimed Jewish owned property.
More Economist: “â€Â¦has urged the CC to make public its lists of
properties and the names of former Jewish owners. This would help
people who may have fair claims but not even, 60-plus years and a
Holocaust later, be aware of them. So why not do it—on the internet,
for example, as with some other categories of Nazi-era assets? One
answer from the CC used to be that this would also help opportunists.
Ms. Gross thinks the real answer is that it is a cagey body that sees
the information, like the properties, as essentially its own to be used
for its purposes; not as improper, but as its own.” Why do you think
they filed claims for the 1,120? I̢۪ll leave the speculation up to the
experts in the field, and I̢۪m sure they have a perfectly good
explanation all lined up, but I don̢۪t know if I like the idea of a
partially self-funded bureaucracy applying for restitution on Jewish
properties for which the CC might or might not be aware they̢۪re the
only potential beneficiaries of a successful claim. It̢۪s dodgy in the
extreme. They defend themselves: “As Julius Berman, the CC chairman
points out, it did set up the goodwill fund and go on accepting claims
after deadlines have passed.” The Economist author goes on to say,
“It’s fair to deduce that it {the CC} cannot have simply been
playing “what’s ours is ours.Ӊ€ I don’t know. I think The
Economist is been a tad too nice to these people. To be fair, there
were no statistics or figures listed in the article about how much
money over the years the CC has disbursed from their proceeds, like
they claim to, to Jewish welfare organizations. I̢۪m not talking about
claims of Holocaust survivors, but of the money the CC says it gives to
support survivors from the proceeds of their property maneuverings. The
total figures of charity allocations are listed on the CC̢۪s website
and it̢۪s troubling in the extreme when you add it all up, or subtract
it as is the case here. According to the CC̢۪s website, in 2002, they
made allocations in thirty-five countries to Jewish welfare
organizations totaling $93m, of which $89.6m came from property
proceeds and the German foundation, “Remembrance, Responsibility, and
the Future.” They do not delineate how much of that $89.6m came from
the property proceeds, but I suspect it̢۪s the lesser of the two
contributions. Something̢۪s just not right here. If they̢۪re
threatening claimants with the loss of their claim money, saying agree to our fees or the whole lot goes to charity
like they did with the family above, how come only $93m was disbursed
to charities? Take the $101M they brought in from property sales and
compensation in 2002, as listed above, and add the $9m in rents and you
get a whopping total of $110m. Now, here̢۪s where the subtraction
comes into play. They say part of that $89.6m listed above was from
property proceeds, how much of it we don̢۪t know, but even if we just
make a guess, and say half of
that $89.6, which would be $44.8m, came from property proceeds, then
subtract it from the $110m they say they brought in 2002, that̢۪s a
very large, unaccounted for chunk of change. You can fiddle with the
numbers yourself. Where did the money go, then? Administrative costs?
Research costs on claims where the only beneficiary is the CC? Where
did the money go? If my math is right, and my assumptions are proven
correct it̢۪s a fair question. Is it being invested? If so, for whom?
The CC? Or for future disbursements? How much are they making on those
investments? If I were a Holocaust survivor, or the child of one, I
would want to know exactly how the CC runs itself and where this money
went. And it should be noted that the property proceeds are only a
portion of the money flowing into this organization besides the
settlements with the Swiss banks and German insurance companies. One
such example is a settlement with the German Finance Ministry over
Kristallnacht,---approximately $65.6m, of which $16.2m of that will go
to the Central Council of Jews in Germany, but it̢۪s considered
restitution for the religious buildings that were destroyed that
horrible night in 1938. None of these sums that are bandied about on
their website and in the Economist article would be considered to be
chump change by anyone other that Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. The
rest of us think that̢۪s a lot of money. I don̢۪t know if there̢۪s
sufficient evidence to prove that they̢۪re holding back, but I think
there̢۪s enough evidence in the light of day, that if you take a
calculator to it, it doesn̢۪t add up. This isn̢۪t a task for me, with
my highly questionable math skills, but even I can tell something
smells here. I am not a big fan of bureaucracy, specifically any sort
of self-funded bureaucracy. Look at OSHA, for an example. The minute it
became responsible for funding itself in the early 1990̢۪s, the number
of violations it reported---and then subsequently fined businesses
for---skyrocketed. Where were all those violations in the years they
were fully funded by the government of the United States? Unreported?
Did they just not bother to go looking? I think we all know the answer:
bureaucracies breed laziness, protectionism, and contempt, whether
fully funded by governments or if they are responsible for funding
themselves. And this particular bureaucracy, specifically established
to provide some small measure of justice on behalf of Jews, is irking
me. Their actions barely reach the transparency level. Yes, there is a
goodly amount of information on their website regarding their
activities, but just by looking at it, and seeing how the information
is disseminated across the website, there̢۪s something going on here.
The CC is simply not transparent enough. There is no information listed
as to what part of their funding goes toward expenditures. According to
the Economist article, the amount they receive for their costs in
settlements seems to vary widely from case to case, even if it̢۪s
settled down to a mere 20% in recent years. The essential question,
however, remains: why should they be charging the claimants for the costs involved?
If the reason these claims are taking place in the first place is
because the German government is taking responsibility for the
Holocaust in a way the GDR never did shouldn̢۪t they be footing the bill for the claims?
Since the CC is partially self-funded, they would undoubtedly tell me
that all this generosity costs time and money and the German government
is chipping out a fair amount already. I would ask them in return: if
you̢۪re stated mission is to make sure Holocaust survivors are taken
care of, should you be deducting what seems to be a large sum of money
for what seems to be entrenching and ensuring your own survival? They
hold their information tight to the vest, because they believe it̢۪s their
information. It̢۪s not. In fairness, however, according to the
article, the CC board when it met in July, with a bit of pressure from
Jewish groups, “agreed at last to publish the old Jewish owner’s
names on the net; maybe in mid-autumn, with a six months deadline for
fresh claims. It is still not keen to publicize that decision; to avoid
a premature rush, it says; it argues that if you can recognize an
address you would have claimed already.” I don’t really think this
is too impressive on the whole. Hmmph. They make it difficult for
claimants to come forward, and in the case of the family listed above, they tell them to take the settlement offered on their terms or they get nothing at all?
My God. Just think about it. The irony here is unbelievable. If you
were a Jew in 1930̢۪s Germany, a big chunk of your life was dedicated
to following dictates set down by the bureaucracy of a government who
hated you. The Nazi̢۪s made you run around the mulberry bush as many
times as they could: bureaucracy was part of their weaponry against
Jews. It̢۪s ironic in the extreme that another bureaucracy would put
these poor people through hell just to get back what was theirs, and
then to top it off, take a contingency fee. What are they doing with
that money? I want to know.

Posted by: Kathy at 07:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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