[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 130 (Monday, October 11, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S11291]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page S11291]]
                       HUNGARIAN GOLD TRAIN CASE

  Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in 
supporting the quest for justice in the Hungarian Gold Train case. I 
have heard from these Holocaust survivors. Their story is painful, and 
the evidence is overwhelming. Our moral duty is clear.
  One of the most troubling aspects of this is that we should not be 
having this debate at all. The facts of the Gold Train incident are not 
really in dispute. And for all the effort expended by the Federal 
Government in court trying to evade these facts, the facts were 
disclosed to the world by the Federal Government itself.
  The reason we know about the Gold Train is because of the 
Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets, PCHA. In the 
1990s, our own Government told other nations they should look into 
their pasts--face the facts--and make redress as appropriate. Seventeen 
nations established commissions to do that. So did we. This Congress 
created the PCHA to study the past and reveal the truth. The Commission 
was fortunate to have Edgar Bronfman, then chairman of the World Jewish 
Congress, as its head. Stuart Eizenstat, the government's top official 
dealing with these matters, was a key member. It had a full staff of 
historians and researchers and a budget of several million dollars.
  The Commission found that the record of the United States was a 
source of pride. Our Nation not only liberated Europe, but after the 
war, served as a model for how to handle the assets that had been 
stolen from Europe's Jews--with one glaring exception. In 1999, the 
Commission issued a report on the Gold Train. After half a century of 
silence and coverup, the Federal Government stated that the Gold Train 
was an ``egregious failure of the United States to follow its own 
policy regarding restitution of Holocaust victims' property after World 
War II.'' We cannot be proud of this conduct, but we can all be proud 
that the Government made this admission.
  We should all have expected that the next step was to make good on 
these disclosures and this conclusion. The Government should have 
compensated these survivors. Instead, the survivors were forced to go 
to court. The Justice Department is fighting them inch by inch.
  One would expect the Justice Department to defend the Government's 
PCHA report. Instead, the Justice Department has disputed the accuracy 
of the report and claimed that the Commission withdrew its report. 
However, as Chairman Edgar Bronfman has made plain, the Progress Report 
is an ``accurate account of the United States' handling and disposition 
of the `Gold Train' property.'' Bronfman also has noted that, ``In no 
way . . . did the PCHA intend to retract or retreat from the findings 
of the Progress Report.'' In fact, Mr. Bronfman points out, the report 
is prominently displayed on the commission's website.
  Our Nation has a duty to the past. It has a duty to these people. 
They are dying every day. The Justice Department should sit down and 
resolve this matter with these survivors. That is the right thing to 
do.

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