[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 68 (Wednesday, May 21, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S4914]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       RELIEF OF CHRISTOPH MEILI

 Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise to explain my reasons for 
being an original cosponsor of this legislation.
  Christoph Meili was until recently a security guard at the Union Bank 
of Switzerland. At about 6 p.m. on January 8 of this year Mr. Meili was 
making his nightly rounds, when he stumbled upon a number of crates 
containing bank documents. Surprised, Mr. Meili examined the documents 
and found them to be ledgers, letters, and statements of account dating 
back to the 1930's and 1940's, and pertaining mostly to Jewish clients.
  Mr. Meili knew that historical documents relating to the relationship 
between Swiss banks and Jews during the Holocaust were an issue of 
international importance. For some time now my colleague from New York, 
Senator D'Amato, has been investigating the role of Swiss banks in 
laundering money for the Nazis during World War II, and in particular 
the possibility that those banks reaped huge profits from property and 
gold confiscated from Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
  In answer to the firestorm of protest over these allegations, the 
Swiss Parliament only 3 weeks before had passed, with great fanfare, a 
law specifically prohibiting the destruction of documents that might 
assist in the search for assets properly belonging to victims of 
Hitler's concentration camps. Yet here were exactly the kind of 
documents the Swiss Parliament presumably wanted to protect.
  At this point, Christoph Meili could have looked the other way. 
Instead he remembered his responsibility as a civilized human being. He 
spent 20 minutes going through the documents, put what seemed the most 
important in his jacket, and took them out to his car.

  We owe Mr. Meili a debt of immense gratitude for this act of 
conscience. But not everyone is thankful to him. He has lost his job. 
He has received death threats. He is uncertain of his own future and 
the future of his wife and two young children. His future does not look 
bright in Switzerland.
  Yet here in America he is welcomed with open arms everywhere he goes, 
as he should be. In early May he was flown to New York under the 
auspices of the World Jewish Congress. He has been warmly received at 
receptions in both New York and Washington. And Mr. Edgar Bronfman, the 
chairman of the World Jewish Congress and president of the Seagram Co., 
has offered him a fulltime job.
  Which brings us to this bill. Mr. Meili and his family seek permanent 
residency in this country. This is an unusual case, in that he requires 
action on the part of Congress to achieve this status. But this is 
necessary because Mr. Meili does not meet the necessary criteria for 
permanent residency under any of the existing categories.
  Mr. Meili has done a great service to the Jewish people, to this 
country and to the civilized world. Without thought for his own future 
or well-being he did what his conscience demanded, and saved valuable 
evidence concerning the relationship between Swiss banks and the 
victims of Hitler's death camps.
  It seems equally clear to me that Mr. Meili has two possible futures 
ahead of him. In the first, we abandon him. The United States turns its 
back on this man of conscience and sends him back to Switzerland. There 
he faces unemployment, a dark blotch on his record for informing on his 
employer, and possibly worse. While the vast majority of the Swiss 
people are decent and law-abiding, some of them already have made 
threats against him. He would be literally a man without a country.
  Alternatively, we could welcome Mr. Meili into our Nation, as so many 
of our people already have welcomed him into their hearts. We have the 
choice. We could open our doors to this man of conscience, giving him 
the chance to make for himself and his family a brighter future in a 
land that treasures the kind of bravery he has displayed.
  His circumstances do not fit any of our set categories for 
immigration. But I am convinced that they present us with the 
opportunity to demonstrate our ability and willingness to recognize 
when noble acts render the particulars of bureaucratic regulation less 
important than the will to do what is right.
  Mr. Meili is the kind of man I want for a neighbor. His is a family I 
feel would benefit any community. Our country can only be made better 
by his permanent residence here.

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