Proceedings for Jewish assets at Swiss banks

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The procedure for the assets of the Jewish victims at Swiss banks , also known as Swissbankclaims for short , was a reparation process to compensate for lost Jewish assets in Switzerland between 1933 and 1945.

background

In 1996, a discussion initiated by the World Jewish Congress and Ed Fagan began in the United States on the activities of Swiss banks during the Second World War . The organization is complaining that compensation for the implicit withholding of dormant Jewish accounts and custody assets. Furthermore, the German National Socialists had “turned over” expropriated assets in the form of jewelry, art and foreign currency in neutral Switzerland.

The banks refused to accept the claims and justified their position with a compensation payment from 1946/47 in the amount of 250 million Swiss francs ( Paris Reparations Agreement , Agreement on German Assets in Switzerland (1946) ) and the previous release of 55,000 accounts, final rejection of further claims before German and US courts in the following period, an unjustified claim for enrichment on the part of the Holocaust organizations in an extortionate manner and with legal uncertainty, since further claims before non-American courts would still be possible. Switzerland itself rejected all claims.

As a result, Swiss products were threatened with boycotts in the US states of New York , New Jersey and California . California, for example, passed the California's Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act (HVIRA) in 1999, a law that required every insurer to provide detailed information on its activities in Europe from 1920 to 1945. As a result, the Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse reached an agreement with the plaintiffs on a global solution in the US District Court in Brooklyn , New York against the Swiss banks in 1998 (CV-96-4849 (8 431884) (0184W98 NB)) 1.25 billion US dollars . The procedure was based on the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789. After a letter of intent dated May 2, 1996, various conventions between January 1999 and August 2000 set out how to proceed.

implementation

In a three-year study, the first so-called Volcker Commission (ICEP) recorded dormant accounts at 254 Swiss commercial, cantonal and private banks over a period of 60 years. 4.1 million accounts (60% of the total) were examined and 53,886 accounts were found with relevant connection. By November 1999, a book value of CHF 22 million had been awarded in 1,221 cases. The decision on the individual claims was made by a Claims Resolution Tribunal CRT. The CRT ceased operations in 2012.

To clarify this, the ICEP also sponsored a study by Helen Junz on the financial situation of the Jewish population before the war in countries under National Socialist occupation, Germany and Austria , which came to the conclusion that prior to the expropriations there were 12.1 billion US dollars in Jewish assets of which 3 billion in cash.

On January 13, 2005, approximately 2,700 additional names of account holders and approximately 400 additional names of authorized representatives of accounts whose owners were possibly or likely victims of National Socialist persecution were published. The CRT had received 32,000 asset claims victim registrations to date and awarded $ 338.5 million.

Claims to other European countries and companies followed these modalities via the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Felix E. Müller: The dispute over the Holocaust funds has changed Switzerland In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of August 12, 2019
  2. ↑ not to be confused with the second , which had a different topic
  3. ↑ An example of a CRT decision: Karl Jakob Mayer, former senator of the TH Darmstadt , born October 12, 1894 in Mainz , died August 9, 1976 in Buenos Aires , had been stripped of his honorary title in 1933 by the National Socialist University since the winter semester 1927/1928. This decision was reversed in January 2015 (sic) in a summary procedure of this TH to cancel depromotions. After fleeing around the world, Mayer first landed in Argentina ; In 1947 he moved to Rio de Janeiro for a certain time according to documents, a Brazilian immigration card . A granddaughter had initiated a CRT procedure in 2005 and had family documents from several generations. On August 31, 2005, the CRT recognized the grandfather's inheritance claim for deposits with a particular Swiss bank; Investigations with other Swiss banks were promised. Thanks to the initiative of the granddaughter, whose name is hidden, something is now known about the life of KJ Mayer after 1933, whose wife came from a previously well-known Darmstadt family, who were a generous patron, especially the TH, until the transfer of power to the National Socialists , occurred. Information is also available about several other family members, some of whom have fled, in ascending and descending lines, although these are obscured in the online version .