Printer Friendly

Email to A Friend

Friday November 21, 1997

Move afoot to collect claims on WWII-era insurance policies

JOEL SCHATZ
Chicago Jewish News

SKOKIE, Ill. -- Victims of the Holocaust and their heirs may one day be able to collect on World War II-era insurance policies, even if they have no evidence or recollection the policies ever existed.

That prospect drew intense interest last week, as insurance commissioners from several states met here for hearings on their possible role in recovering untold millions in rejected or unclaimed insurance benefits stemming from Holocaust acts.

Terrell E. Hunt, president of Risk International Services, told the National Association of Insurance Commissioners panel that any claim recovery effort should not focus solely on the relatively small percentage of survivors and family members who can produce documentation. Intense efforts also must be made to locate policy information that then can be used to identify those who have proceeds due them, an approach he referred to as "policies looking for claimants."

Hunt's firm specializes in what he described as "insurance archaeology," which has been used in the United States to support large-scale environmental and asbestos claims that span several decades. Hunt said similar techniques can be used to pursue the claims of Holocaust victims.

While he encouraged individuals to file claims and seek court action, he said the NAIC can exert significant leverage to unlock potentially vast resources of information contained in insurance company archives; the records of agents, lawyers and others; and in German records seized by the communists at the end of World War II and now stored in Moscow.

An overlooked but potentially major source of both information and funds, Hunt said, is the reinsurance market -- companies that insure primary insurers. Many of the German, Austrian, Swiss, Italian and other companies that wrote policies prior to and during the war were reinsured through what is known as the London Market, he said. Those records, and possibly that liability, may still exist.

The NAIC's hearing was the second in a series being held around the country. Another was set for Miami this week, and sessions in Los Angeles, Seattle and New York are being arranged.

Deborah Senn, Washington state's insurance commissioner and head of the working group holding the hearings, said her office and others have heard from many Holocaust victims unable to collect on life, property, dowry and other types of insurance claims. Because insurance is regulated on the state level in this country, and many of the European insurers involved have U.S. operations, state regulators have made an unprecedented commitment to help the survivors, Senn said.

The Skokie hearing, held the morning after the 59th anniversary of Kristallnacht was a mix of survivors' tales, requests for help and proposals for action.

The non-payment of claims is a case of deceit and betrayal, said Charles Lipshitz, head of Sheerith Hapleitah, an umbrella group of Chicago-area survivors organizations.

"All we want is justice," he said. The war was over, Hitler was defeated and the companies "had nothing to fear anymore."

Speaking by phone from Europe, Saul Kagan of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany said his group has been in discussions with one of the largest insurers, Allianz, and the firm has agreed to a procedure to determine what records can be examined. What the conference ultimately wants, Kagan said, is a review and compensation procedure that parallels the one created for Swiss banks.

"Quick response is called for," Kagan said. "It is not just a financial issue. It is a moral issue."

At the first hearing, in September, German-based Allianz issued a statement saying the company does not believe it has open life insurance claims relating to the Holocaust, but has taken steps to receive such information and to review its own records.

Several witnesses in Skokie, home to one of the largest concentrations of Holocaust survivors in the country, told tales of contacting insurance companies in the years after World War II and being told the benefits or cash value of their policies had been paid to the Nazis, or that the policy had been issued by Eastern European affiliates whose assets had been nationalized by the communists after the war. In either case, the company claimed it had no further responsibility or couldn't act until there was a change of government.

Commissioners hearing the testimony questioned whether either action relieved the companies of responsibility to pay the designated beneficiaries. They also were interested to learn that at least some companies still had such detailed information on policies available.

Attorney Linda Gerstel, one of the lead lawyers in a federal class-action suit against more than a dozen of the insurance companies, said it is well documented that Nazi leaders met with executives of major insurance companies about the huge losses resulting from the attacks. The Jewish community was later taxed to cover the costs, she said.

In addition to financial compensation, Gerstel said those involved in the lawsuit -- which is in its preliminary stages in New York's southern district -- want a full accounting of the relationship between the Nazi Party and the insurance companies.

At the close of the hearing, Steven Jakubowski, the son of survivors, said he has no hope of ever personally seeing any insurance proceeds. But efforts such as the NAIC's give him hope. They keep people looking at what they did during the Holocaust, and what they didn't do.

And that, he said, is what makes the anthem "Never Again" a reality.

Did you find this article interesting? Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and you'll be notified each week when "J." goes online. We'll tell you about the most important stories of the week and give you a link to each one.

This page contains a BETA version of Amazon contextual links. They are marked by the dashed underline.  Your purchases support our site. At times they point to items which are not related to the actual link. Please alert us by email if you discover objectionable links.