[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 58 (Wednesday, May 1, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E679-E680]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      TRIBUTE TO EDGAR BRONFMAN, PRESIDENT, WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS

                                 ______


                           HON. SAM GEJDENSON

                             of connecticut

                    in the house of representatives

                         Wednesday, May 1, 1996

  Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Speaker, on April 24, 1996 the Senate Committee on 
Banking held a hearing to return the missing Jewish money, deposited by 
many Jews before the Holocaust, to their survivors. I would like to 
commend Mr. Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress for 
his tireless efforts and his dedication to obtain a full and 
independent accounting of Jewish and Nazi assets in Swiss banks. Mr. 
Speaker, I ask for you to have the testimony given by Mr. Bronfman at 
this hearing inserted into the Record, and I hope all my colleagues 
will take the time to read these important words.

Testimony of Edgar M. Bronfman, President, World Jewish Congress, World 
                    Jewish Restitution Organization

       Mr. Chairman, I want to commend you for holding these 
     hearings and for the outstanding job your staff has been 
     doing in ferreting out information long lost or concealed. 
     That which you are doing is of great historic significance. 
     Our collective mission here is nothing short of bringing 
     about justice. We are here to help write the last chapter of 
     the bitter legacy of the Second World War and the Holocaust.
       Today, Mr. Chairman, I am acting in my capacities as 
     President of the World Jewish Congress and as President of 
     the World Jewish Restitution Organization. I am also 
     testifying on behalf of my Co-chairman, Mr. Avrum Burg, the 
     Chairman of the Jewish Agency.
       The WJRO was created in 1992 by the leading international 
     Jewish organizations and the survivor's groups to coordinate 
     claims for the return of Jewish community property and the 
     transfer to the Jewish people of heirless holdings. We also 
     work to secure for individual Jews no longer resident in the 
     countries in question the same rights that would obtain for 
     local Jews who remain. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I 
     would like to submit as part of my formal testimony, the list 
     of the international organizations that make up the WJRO. 
     [List to be appended]
       The WJRO has also been designated by two successive Prime 
     Ministers to represent the State of Israel in these matters. 
     It has also concluded agreements with Jewish Communities in 
     several countries in order to coordinate restitution efforts.
       I hope it will not sound presumptuous, Mr. Chairman, but I 
     speak to you today on behalf of the Jewish people. With 
     reverence, I also speak on behalf of the six million, those 
     who cannot speak for themselves.
       The issue before us today, the one I want to talk to you 
     about, can be summed up in a single word: Justice.
       Fifty years after the Holocaust, as Germany and the 
     collaborationist countries have sought to face their 
     responsibilities and make restitution, there remains the 
     glaring void in the behavior of the banks of Switzerland.
       Just a year ago today, the bipartisan leaders of the United 
     States Congress declared in a letter to the Secretary of 
     State, and I quote:
       ``It should be made clear to the countries involved that 
     their response on this [restitution] matter will be seen as a 
     test of their respect for basic human rights and the rule of 
     law, and could have practical consequences on their relations 
     with our country. It is the clear policy of the United States 
     that each should expeditiously enact appropriate legislation 
     for the prompt restitution and/or compensation for property 
     and assets seized by the former Nazi and/or Communist 
     regimes. We believe it is a matter of both law and justice.''
       President Clinton has declared:
       ``We must confront and, as best we can, right the terrible 
     injustices of the past. I thus support the efforts of the 
     World Jewish Restitution Organization and the World Jewish 
     Congress to help resolve the question of Jewish properties 
     confiscated during and after the Second World War.''
       Mr. Chairman, I wish to personally commend Ambassador 
     Stuart Eizenstat for his contribution to this effort. 
     President Clinton assigned him a special mission to assist in 
     this task while he was the United States Representative to 
     the European Union, and although he returned to Washington 
     earlier this month to become Undersecretary of Commerce for 
     International Trade, he will continue his efforts as Special 
     Envoy on Property Claims in Central Europe. He has been doing 
     an outstanding job serving the interests of all Americans, 
     not only Jews.
       I would also like to take this opportunity of adding that 
     the European Parliament unanimously added its voice to that 
     of the United States, expressing the same view and declaring 
     that restitution is a matter of justice which must be 
     fulfilled.
       Mr. Chairman, as the Congressional letter made clear, what 
     today's hearing is about is ``respect for basic human rights 
     and the rule of law.'' Nothing less.
       I am not here to talk about whether there is only $32 
     million remaining in Swiss banks belonging to Holocaust 
     victims and survivors or, as may be closer to the truth, 
     several billion. Nor am I ready to endorse those who say the 
     records were purposely destroyed and the money confiscated.
       When I met with the Swiss Bankers Association on September 
     12, 1995 in Bern, I was struck by one comment they made to 
     me. ``Mr. Bronfman,'' they said, ``we do not wish to hold on 
     to one Swiss franc that is not ours.''
       I told them that I certainly agreed with that sentiment. I 
     explained to them that the World Jewish Congress initiated 
     activity aimed at the recovery of Jewish property even before 
     the war in Europe ended. In November 1944, Dr. Nahum 
     Goldmann, the co-founder of the World Jewish Congress raised 
     the issue at the War Emergency Conference in Atlantic City. 
     He declared then:
       ``The principle that Jewish assets must be given back to 
     their legitimate holders wherever possible must be regarded 
     as inviolable.''
       Now that the Swiss Bankers have told me they accept this 
     universal principle, Mr. Chairman, I ask that you, your 
     Committee, this Congress and our Government help the Swiss 
     Bankers fulfill their own wish not to hold on to a single 
     Swiss franc that is not their own.
       A word of concern, Mr. Chairman: time is running out for 
     those who will be the primary recipients of this restitution. 
     Knowing you as I do, I am confident that your investigation 
     will be thorough and will result in the full exposure of the 
     facts.
       At the aforesaid meeting in Bern September last, I did not 
     discuss dollar amounts. What I sought was an impartial audit. 
     I came away thinking that we had agreed on that, but in 
     February, the Swiss Bankers Association unilaterally 
     announced they had done their own survey and had found only 
     $32 million--an amount that defies credibility.
       ``Trust us,'' they told the victims of the Holocaust, ``we 
     looked into our records and our own vaults and that's all we 
     could find.''
       One of the documents already uncovered and released by your 
     own investigators, Mr. Chairman, suggest that at a single 
     Swiss financial institution, the present values of deposits 
     may be nearly that much alone.
       Mr. Chairman, as you may know, heading these two 
     organizations is not my only job. I am also a businessman.
       As a businessman, I often deal with bankers. I know that 
     the most important asset any banker can have is his 
     reputation, the trust of his customers. If we cannot have 
     faith in the integrity and trustworthiness, in the honor of 
     the banker to protect our deposits, to give a faithful and 
     accurate accounting, then we must go elsewhere.
       Dealing with the Jewish people must be for the Swiss 
     bankers and issue of trust.
       What is urgently needed, Mr. Chairman, is a transparent 
     mechanism to conduct a verifiable audit of all Nazi-era 
     assets, those deposited by Jews and those assets stolen from 
     the Jews by the Nazis and also deposited in Switzerland and 
     their disposition so that all the parties involved can be 
     satisfied justice has been served.
       The Swiss bankers cannot be permitted to come back and say, 
     once again, that they will create such a process, but that 
     they want to be the ones who appoint the auditors. Their 
     repeated failure of integrity over 50 years has forfeited for 
     them such a privilege. There must be an arm's-length process 
     that is credible to the entire world.
       There is already much to learn from the very beginning of 
     the documents uncovered

[[Page E680]]

     by your Committee and by others working elsewhere. They 
     demonstrate that during the Nazi era the Swiss were far from 
     neutral. Their assistance to the Nazi war machine, through 
     the clandestine conversion of looted gold into Swiss francs, 
     enable the Germans to buy fuel and other raw materials they 
     needed to prolong the war. Some estimates in testimony before 
     the U.S. Senate hearings following the War suggest the cost 
     may have been staggering in the lives of American soldiers, 
     Allied soldiers, Jews and other civilians across that 
     continent.
       The Germans were looting synagogues, schools, museums and 
     the bodies they were about to toss into the ovens. They 
     snatched works of art. They took wedding rings and gold teeth 
     and melted them down. They cast ingots that were falsely 
     marked to appear as if they were pre-war gold and, as records 
     are showing, they took it to bankers who were only too 
     willing to look the other way.
       Mr. Chairman, many Jews in Central Europe, and many others 
     in those countries, saw the Nazis coming and made the trip to 
     Switzerland because they thought their assets could be held 
     safely there. They put their faith in Swiss neutrality and 
     the integrity of that nation's banking system. It appears 
     they were betrayed.
       Only through a full, fair and impartial audit can we 
     uncover the truth. I would hope the Swiss bankers will 
     cooperate fully in this endeavor as it appears to be the only 
     way to deal with this crisis in confidence they have created 
     and has been called into question by so many.
       Mr. Chairman. I do not propose here a discussion of 
     specific amounts of money. Yet, I believe that each dollar 
     recovered represents a little piece of dignity, not just for 
     the survivors who will benefit, but for all mankind who will 
     have demonstrated that it remains morally unacceptable for 
     anyone to profit from the ashes of man's greatest inhumanity 
     to man.

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