[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 48 (Thursday, March 25, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E596]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR TAX RELIEF ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JERRY WELLER

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 25, 1999

  Mr. WELLER. Mr. Speaker, today, after years of arduous effort, 
survivors of the Holocaust who had their assets withheld from them by 
Swiss banks and others have finally received justice in the form of a 
settlement between the banks and the survivors' attorneys achieved last 
year. Under the settlement, survivors around the globe will receive 
$1.25 billion. This settlement will finally return the assets to 
survivors more than 50 years after they were entrusted to these banks.
  In addition to the survivors who are party to this historic 
settlement, there are survivors who are needy and have received one-
time payments from the Swiss government through the Swiss Humanitarian 
Fund. Payments from this fund to needy Holocaust survivors in the 
United States have totaled $31.4 million. Banks and corporations in 
France, Austria, Italy and Germany are establishing similar funds to 
compensate claimants for bank accounts, insurance policies, slave labor 
and other assets. Whether the payments are from the banks, the Swiss 
government or other sources, they should be excluded from taxation 
because the survivors are receiving back what was rightfully theirs to 
begin with.
  Survivors who sued banks, insurance companies and manufacturers who 
profited from slave labor during he Holocaust did so because there was 
no other avenue for them to seek justice. Deprived of their assets, or 
those of their families, these brave souls fought unsuccessfully for 
fifty years until now to regain what belonged to them.
  I rise today, joined by my colleague, Representative Robert Matsui, 
to introduce H.R. 1292, the Holocaust Survivor Tax Relief Act of 1999. 
Senators Fitzgerald, Moynihan and Abraham are also introducing 
companion legislation in the Senate. Our legislation will exclude these 
payments from federal income tax.
  There is little time to debate over these payments when the average 
Holocaust survivor is 80 years old. We must do everything we can to 
ease the lives in their final years, and therefore it would be wrong 
and immoral to tax them on the long overdue receipt of the assets. What 
these survivors are receiving from the various funds is money that is 
rightly theirs in the first place.
  These survivors of the Holocaust deserve justice. Having escaped 
death at the hands of the Nazis, they were subjected to victimization 
by European banks and insurers. Those who endured the tortures of slave 
labor have never been compensated for their servitude to the Nazis. Now 
that they have begun to receive some measure of justice let us not add 
insult to their injury by taxing these long overdue payments to which 
they are entitled.

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