ISRAELI BANKS KEPT NAZI VICTIMS ASSESTS
Israeli banks and institutions kept Nazi victims'
assets
By Jean Shaoul
23 August 2000
Evidence is emerging from an Israeli parliamentary committee and
court action that some of the pillars of the Israeli financial
establishment hung on to the assets of Jews who died under the
Nazi regime and blocked attempts by the victims' families to seek
justice. The committee has recommended an independent audit of at
least 12,000 dormant accounts and 5,000 safe deposit boxes at
Bank Leumi.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Zionist leaders actively sought
investment to build up Zionist enterprises and settlements in
what was then British-ruled Palestine. European Jews bought plots
of land and opened bank accounts in Palestine as a way of
contributing to the establishment of a Jewish homeland, preparing
for their own or their families' eventual emigration, and later,
after Hitler took power, seeking a haven for their savings.
No one knows for certain how much was involved. It is believed
that some $40 million was deposited in bank accounts and a
similar amount invested in land, much of which would now be in
prime locations in Haifa and Tel Aviv. Money and other valuables
were kept in safe deposits whose whereabouts are unknown.
When the Second World War broke out, the British mandate
government in Palestine seized the land and bank accounts held by
Jews from countries under Nazi rule as enemy property. Most of
the money was transferred back to London. Under the settlement
with Israel in 1950 , the British government paid back just $1.4
million in compensation for the bank accounts and handed over
records of the seized accounts and land to the Israeli
government. While some restitution payments were reportedly made,
the fate of other accounts and properties is unclear.
Shmuel Tsur, the Custodian-General at the Ministry of Justice who
manages the unclaimed property, maintains that almost all the
confiscated assets were either returned to their owners or handed
over to his office. He estimates that 20 percent of the holdings,
worth about $90 million, belonged to European Jews killed in the
war. Of the list of unclaimed accounts and properties published
by his office in 1997, fewer than 10 have been returned after
claims to them were confirmed. He used this to justify his
assertion that there was no reservoir of money or property hidden
away, but was forced to admit under questioning by the
parliamentary committee that he could not be sure that he had
received full reports from the banks regarding all dormant
accounts. "I start from the assumption that the bank reports are
correct," he said. He also acknowledged that successive Israeli
governments sold many of the plots of land to cover taxes or
expropriated them for development or military use.
Colette Avital, a member of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's One
Israel Party and chair of the parliamentary committee, said that
for years there have been lists of property abandoned by its
owners, including those who were believed to have perished in the
Holocaust. She said the Custodian-General had 4,300 real estate
assets, but other groups, such as the Jewish National Fund, also
held properties but had refused to publish details until pressed
by the hearings of the parliamentary committee. According to
Avital, while the banks said they had passed all information
about dormant accounts to the custodian-general she was sceptical
that full details were given.
Avital presented one example of an account from 1940 in which
96,000 lira was deposited. At the time, she said, the money was
enough to purchase two apartments on Rehov Allenby, one of the
main streets in Tel Aviv. "After 60 years, the Custodian-General
is offering to give back NIS [New Israeli Shekels] 285," she
said. The sum is equivalent to US$73.
Earlier this year, Bank Leumi published on its Internet site a
list of accounts that had been inactive since 1955 or earlier.
The Jewish National Fund, a land development agency, also
published on its site a list of plots sold to Jews before the war
that remain unclaimed. Last November, class action suits were
brought on behalf of relatives of Holocaust victims against Bank
Leumi and the privately owned Israel Land Development Company,
set up by the Zionist movement to buy land in Palestine. The
families are demanding full disclosure of the accounts and land
bought by Jews who perished under the Nazis.
Holocaust survivors refrained from such a search for property for
years and left the matter for the state to handle, she noted.
Avital said that on the official level, bureaucratic inertia had
prevented effective action to trace and return the unclaimed
assets. "There was a lot of neglect and lack of sensitivity," she
said.
In a related development, an international panel investigating
insurance policies held by Holocaust victims announced last April
that it had the names of 19,000 people who were owed money.
For decades the issue of the lost accounts and assets generated
little interest in Israel. Jewish survivors from Nazi Germany,
who came to Palestine, and later Israel, devoted their energies
to tracing their relatives and building a new society. As Dr.
Yossi Katz, a professor at Bar Ilan University, and author of the
recently published Forgotten Property, said, "In the early years
of nation building and in subsequent decades, there were other
priorities. Until the 1990s, the issue didn't trouble the public.
Other matters were seen as far more important, such as security
and absorption of immigrants. It's safe to assume that had the
issue not come up recently in Europe, it would not have come up
in Israel. There was a reluctance here to deal with the Holocaust
in economic terms. It was inconceivable to turn the Holocaust
into a material issue. A younger generation had to come along
that was not directly linked to the Holocaust and could deal with
it less sentimentally."
That this new generation was prepared to take up the issue also
denotes a generation that does not have the same blind faith in
the Zionist dream of creating a safe haven for the Jewish people.
There has been extensive press coverage of the failure of the
Swiss banks to reveal the existence of accounts belonging to Nazi
victims. Edward Korman, an American judge, has just given his
final approval to a $1.25 billion settlement and was highly
critical of the way the Swiss banks behaved during the three-year
audit to unearth records that might be linked to Nazi victims.
Israel provided vocal support for this campaign, but has been
remarkably reticent about its own record.
Eleazer Shafrir is a 76-year-old retired biochemistry professor.
His father visited Poland in 1938 and was persuaded by the
Zionist movement to invest in Palestine, but remain in Poland. He
said, "Everyone knew that something was happening in Europe. He
[his father] wanted to make aliya [emigrate] but he was convinced
by the people in Jerusalem that it was much more important that
he be there in Poland." As a result, his father, a community
leader, was one of the first to be rounded up by the Nazis when
they invaded Poland and died in Auschwitz in 1940. Shafrir added,
"This is not about money. I do not want to enrich myself. I think
this is fundamental justice. What is painful is that we demanded
from the Swiss and other nations the return of Jewish property
and the return of Jewish art belonging to people who died in the
Holocaust. But in our country, we cannot organise the return of
property to survivors of people lost in the Holocaust."
Israeli banks and the Israel Land Development Company have
resisted opening up their records. As the victims' lawyer Roland
Roth argued, both the Israeli and Swiss banks are motivated by a
desire to preserve their assets. "Every economic body has an
interest in holding on to what it can," he said.
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