Should modern day Germans be responsible for making reparation for Nazi terror?

Yes

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by Suzanna Billingsley Frost

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Yes, I do believe reparations to the victims for Nazi crimes is justice being served, and modern day Germany has paid alot for the Nazi war crimes. The event of WW II was one of the most heinous of crimes in human history. Yet still to this very day the devastation of the events has left survivors with little justice due to rejections, delays and bureaucratic red tape and policies that do not meet requirments for justice.

When holocaust survivors or heirs of victims went and presented claims to insurance companies after WW II, many were rejected because they did not have certificates or any physical possessions of policy documents that had been confiscated by the Nazis or lost during the holocaust itself. Insurance companies and records in government archives are the only proof for the existence of policies belonging to the victims.

In the mid-to late 1990s, lawsuits against German, Swiss, Austrian, Italian, and French insurance companies, brought international attention to the fact that looted holocaust-era assets and unpaid insurance policies, along with dormant bank accounts had been withheld from the victims. Many of these lawsuits were filed in U.S. courts by survivors that shed light that billions of dollars worth of assets seized by the Nazis from individuals and deposited into private and national banks throughout Western Europe, had never been returned. This was also an issue during the 1950s and 60s.

Damaging effects of international criticism arising from these events led governments near and far to resolve pending lawsuits against companies in other countries and insurance companies that do business in the U.S. So in 1997 in response to the increasing claims against European insurance companies operating in the U.S., the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC) was formed to solve these issues once and for all.

The ICHEIC began in 1998, in which the Clinton Administration took the lead and agreed to endorse. The commission included U.S. Insurance Regulators, six European insurers, The International Jewish Organization, and the State of Israel, who all agreed with this establishment as the mechanism for resolving unpaid holocaust insurance claims. The United States Congress believed that the U.S. courts did have jurisdiction to entertain actions by the holocaust victims in recovering insurance proceeds sold to families before WW II, along with dormant bank accounts and looted assets.

The ICHEIC's claims process opened its door in 2000 using inconsistant standards and rejecting what were many times valid claims. The ICHEIC failed to adequately identify potential policy holders and failed to administer repayment of tens of thousands of policy holders. When the ICHEIC process was completed, fewer than 5% of policies estimated to have been sold had been paid through the ICHEIC. The ICHEIC closed its doors in 2007 without the disclosure of thousands of names of policies sold, as with the insurance companies that withheld names of owners and beneficiaries.

Upon its closure, the ICHEIC failed to provide the State Department the information it had requested in collecting these claims. The State department noted that the ICHEIC failed to investigate or obtain restitution for forms of insurance records of re-insurers, and despite evidence that reinsurance played a significant role in the theft of assets during WW II. The ICHEIC argued that the total amount paid by the ICHEIC fell short of unpaid policies suggested a lack of surviving claimants rather than flawed claims process.

Yet the ICHEIC's purposely and unnecessarily prolonged process claims with delays causing tens of thousands of eligible claimants to be excluded from the process during its time frame to collect unpaid policies. It also failed to investigate and review policy audits that allowed room for unfair insurer influences and often rejected valid claims. The ICHEIC went on to blame the responsibility for verifying and accepting or rejecting submitted claims to be placed on the insurance companies.

The estimated value of unpaid policies range from $17 to $200 billion. The amount received in total from participating insurers was $550 million. Of this $350 million was secured from German companies. (The German Government and industry had committed $5 billion to compensate victims of the Nazi war crimes). Others that paid were Italian insurers, Austrian, bilateral agreement between the ICHEIC, Swiss, Dutch along with a few other insurance companies, that were an estimated total of $200 million, so say the ICHEIC.

Passed by the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee was the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2007. This Act required insurance companies that do business with the U.S. to disclose the names of all holocaust-era policy holders, and to create a registry list for survivors to make information on policies available. It would also allow survivor's to bring claims against insurance companies in the U.S.

But critics of the bill including the Bush Administration argued that public disclosure of the names would be a violation of individual rights towards the insurance companies, under privacy rights. They also made note that the U.S. Federal Government could not forbid U.S. citizens from pursuing legal actions against insurance companies.

It did however commit to file a statement of interest encouraging the dismissal of any future actions against German insurance companies in the United States for the sake of peace. (Before this file of interest the Administration had granted German insurance companies legal agreement of peace from further actions against them in U.S. courts on these matters).

Although the government acknowledged that the ICHEIC process used inconsistent standards, lies, theft, and fraudulent acts from both ICHEIC and insurance companies that continue to this very day, they argued that the process was fair and comprehensive.

What government tells people not to pursue what is legally and rightfully theirs. One that might find a few lawsuits in the courts with German insurance companies that had indeed paid claims to the ICHEIC, and claimants who never received payment. A few insurance companies involved in withholding payment were some involved with the bailout. But don't take my word for it, all this information is in public government archives.

Germany did pay for alot of the Nazi crimes, but the U.S. withheld information and money that belonged to the victims of these crimes. Before trying to remove the splinter from thy brothers eye, remove the plank from thy own eye first. Because instead of solving the issue, America gave these victims a financial holocaust, because the majority of these claimants can't afford everyday necessities much less lawyers and court fees to get their policy payment. The bottom line of the ICHEIC, was to shut the victims up. I suppose we are reaping what we sowed.

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