Summary:Stuart Eizenstat, author of Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor and the Unfinished Business of World War II, addressed a rapt audience to tell the improbable story of how 50 years later, the victims of the greatest robbery in history, were compensated — if imperfectly. It is the story of deposits made by Jews to Swiss banks for protection from the Nazis that were never returned; of corporations held accountable for slave and forced labor — fifty years later; of stolen art reunited with its rightful owners or their heirs and insurance policies never paid.
What began as a seemingly simple request to return property to newly emerging religious communities in Europe so that they could rebuild 50 years after the end of WWII turned into a six year quest that lasted right up to the last minutes of the Clinton administration. It involved political intrigue, threats of sanctions, presidential interference, behind the scenes negotiations, all to get Swiss banks and former wartime "employers" to pay restitution. Though Eizenstat′s mission generated a decidedly unenthusiastic response from the European community, that did not deter him.
This effort was seen by the U.S. as a chance to rectify the moral cloud hanging over it for doing so little to help Europe′s refugees either during or after the war, coupled with the knowledge that in the face of concrete evidence, there was no definitive statement by either Roosevelt or Churchill against the genocide that they knew was taking place.
What raised the issue that was dormant for five decades, prompting an investigation that turned Switzerland on its head and rocked the U.S. from coast to coast? The confluence of three events:
- The realization by survivors of the Nazi holocaust that they had only a few years of life remaining.
- The end of the Cold War, which freed up energy for attention to other matters. Archives were opened and people became aware of previously undisclosed events.
- A series of 50th anniversary celebrations across Europe and the U.S., prompting a look at what Eizenstat calls the unfinished business of World War II.
The payoff of this investigation, Eizenstat emphasized, was the emergence of the truth. Eizenstat served as intermediary between the Swiss banks, lawyers representing plaintiffs in class action suits, the Swiss, German and French governments, insurance companies and the United States government. What became clear was that Switzerland acted as financier for the Third Reich, depositing gold it knew the Germans looted from the banks of the countries it overran. This encouraged the Swiss to be forthcoming in its efforts to return the contents of more than 20,000 dormant accounts to their rightful owners.
The German government forced 10 million people — nonJews from other countries — into slave and forced labor in its factories to keep its economy going while its own citizens were fighting the war. The compensation to the victims was minimal — $2500 for those in forced labor and $7500 for those in slave labor — but the act offered a modicum of closure and acknowledgment for those wronged.
In many respects, Eizenstat said, there can be no final accounting. This was an imperfect justice because it did not help at all the millions who died during and after the war, and imperfectly helped those who survived. He likened the process to the civil side of the Nuremberg trials, advancing the cause of human rights, prompting education and perpetuating truth.
The most honest commissions, he said, were the Swiss and the French — the only Western democracy to willingly transport its own citizens to their death. After decades of denial, the ultimate admission by Jacques Chirac that the Vichy government was indeed French, enabled a new honesty.
The negotiations, said Eizenstat, "opened a window for a new form of foreign policy" — the democratization of foreign policy.
Stuart Eizenstat is a partner at the law firm of Covington and Burling. He was also Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Under Secretary of State, Under Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union during the Clinton Administration and Chief Domestic Policy Advisor in the Carter Administration.
