July 22


GLOBAL:

Stop personal attacks on Claims Conference leaders


The recent international Conference on Holocaust Era Assets in Prague
highlighted the plight of needy Holocaust survivors throughout the world.
For the first time, 46 states endorsed the conclusion that It is
unacceptable that those who suffered so greatly during the earlier part of
their lives should live under impoverished circumstances at the end, and
that a high priority must be to address the social welfare needs of the
most vulnerable elderly victims of Nazi persecution -- such as hunger
relief, medicine and home care as required, as well as measures that will
encourage intergenerational contact and allow them to overcome their
social isolation. These steps will enable them to live in dignity in the
years to come.

The conference at the end of June also dealt with other pressing
unresolved issues arising out of the Holocaust, including the restitution
of communal and private Jewish real property, looted Judaica and Jewish
cultural property, Nazi-confiscated and looted art, the preservation of
Jewish cemeteries and burial sites, the need to maintain the integrity of
the sites of mass annihilation, and a categorical, unambiguous repudiation
of Holocaust denial and trivialization.

The declaration issued at the end constitutes a comprehensive road map of
the final phase of the complex Holocaust reparations and restitution
process. Its adoption was due primarily to the tireless efforts of Stuart
Eizenstat, who headed the U.S. delegation; J. Christian Kennedy, the State
Departments special envoy for Holocaust issues; and a group of dedicated
professionals who ensured that experts and stakeholders alike had genuine
input into the conference proceedings. Among the critical catalysts in the
latter category are the members of the senior staff of the Conference on
Jewish Material Claims against Germany, popularly known as the Claims
Conference.

Without question, the Claims Conference is the single most important and
effective body providing assistance to Holocaust survivors throughout the
world. It also is frequently under attack by individuals and groups that
take issue with its process of allocating funds.

No organization should be immune from criticism. However, some of the
charges directed against the Claims Conference are out of control. Among
the most commonly heard accusations are that the organizations leadership
is somehow hostile to Holocaust survivors. This canard must finally be
laid to rest.

First, prominent Holocaust survivors are integral members of the Claims
Conference and its committees. Roman Kent, chairman of the American
Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, serves as
the Claims Conference treasurer and has been a key figure in its
negotiations with Germany together with Holocaust survivors Noach Flug
from Israel and Ben Helfgott from England.

Sam Bloch, the president of the American Gathering, is a member of the
Claims Conference Executive Committee, and American Gathering Senior Vice
President Max Liebmann has been appointed as one of a number of ad
personam members of the Claims Conference board.

Three organizations of Holocaust survivors are full members of the Claims
Conference, and survivors are prominently represented on all of the
organizations committees.

More importantly, while one may certainly disagree with individual
allocations and actions of the Claims Conference, the integrity of its
leaders and their dedication to the needs and welfare of Holocaust
survivors is beyond question.

Rabbi Julius Berman, the chairman of the Claims Conference, is a highly
respected attorney in New York, a former chairman of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and past president of
the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations in America. In the interest of
full disclosure, I once worked closely with Julie for several years at his
law firm, Kaye Scholer LLP, and have always found him to be a man of the
highest integrity who devotes himself wholeheartedly to Jewish causes,
including the plight of needy Holocaust survivors.

Reuven Merhav, chairman of the Claims Conference Executive Committee, was
born in Haifa shortly after his parents had immigrated to Palestine from
Nazi Germany. He is a former director general of Israels Foreign Ministry
and played a key role in the rescue of Ethiopian Jews.

In the late 1930s Merhavs father, Walter Markowicz, lacked the 500 pounds
of sterling to purchase a certificate to enable his own father, Reuven's
grandfather, to escape Germany and settle in Palestine.

"I am with the Claims Conference because I have been scalded personally,"
Merhav has explained. "My father never talked about it at home, but we
knew he had not succeeded in getting Grandpa out. In April 1942, Grandpa
was transported from Breslau to Theresienstadt and perished there half a
year later.

Eizenstat, the Claims Conferences special negotiator responsible for the
German negotiations since earlier this year, served as U.S. ambassador to
the European Union, under secretary of commerce for international trade,
under secretary of state for economic, business and agricultural affairs,
and deputy secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration.

Throughout that period, he also obtained more than $8 billion in
compensation and restitution for Holocaust survivors, including payments
to slave and forced laborers, the return of thousands of Jewish communal
and private properties, the payments of tens of thousands of previously
undisclosed bank accounts, the recovery of hundreds of pieces of looted
art, and the payments on thousands of insurance policies.

Indeed, it is thanks to his selfless dedication and tireless efforts that
the issue of providing a measure of justice for Holocaust survivors more
than half a century after the end of World War II has been placed at the
forefront of the international communitys agenda.

This year alone, the negotiations spearheaded by Eizenstat and Kent
resulted in 13,000 survivors who previously had been turned down becoming
eligible for reparations for the first time, and in the improvement in
existing pension payments to survivors totaling more than $50 million.

I am not suggesting that legitimate criticisms of the Claims Conference
should not be aired, but it would behoove all involved to focus on
constructive solutions that benefit the survivors rather than engaging in
disingenuous personal attacks.

(source: op-ed, JTA----Menachem Z. Rosensaft, the son of two survivors of
Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, is vice president of the American Gathering
of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants and adjunct professor
of law at Cornell Law School. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to
the June 2009 Prague Conference on Holocaust Era Assets.)