Nazi Gold Page 19
Ginzberg’s progress had not been smooth. In the weeks before his departure, the State Department had resisted his appointment. Tinged with anti-Semitism and ambivalent about refugees as “a losing card,” State Department officials knew that the British Foreign Office opposed any conference, while the French were lukewarm. But the department’s opposition collapsed under the onslaught of the crusaders in the Treasury and White House. “We had to push the State Department,” Ginzberg told his friends just three days before his departure. Despite those difficulties, the letter of appointment from John Hildring, an assistant secretary of state, included a ringing exhortation: “This government feels that it has a particular moral obligation to these unfortunate victims of Hitlerite aggression.” Few, however, expected any results. Although Article 8 of the Paris Agreement had established an Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees, Ginzberg arrived in London knowing that Britain’s “delaying tactics … by raising a host of extraneous issues” reflected its “deep antagonism” to the very idea of such a committee. Five months had elapsed since the original reparation agreement had been signed, and while the condition of the Jewish refugees deteriorated, the French government had failed to convene the five-nation conference in Paris. After his first meetings with the British, the Allies’ lack of interest was confirmed. Ginzberg sought the advice of Sam Burger, the labor attaché at the American embassy. The solution, suggested Burger, was to meet “my good friend Hector McNeil.” McNeil, a junior minister at the Foreign Office, was preparing for a visit to Washington. “It’s all about big prices,” Burger told Ginzberg as they drove at night to McNeil’s home in north London. “The Brits need us.” “I’ll offer him a deal,” laughed Ginzberg, who that day had met David Ben Gurion, the Zionist leader. “None of the Allies,” Ben Gurion had moaned, “want to help us.” Unlike conventional diplomats, Ginzberg was motivated to help his people.
While smoking Ginzberg’s Chesterfields, McNeil was candid about the obstacles: “We don’t want to complicate the Palestinian problem.” Giving money to Jewish refugees to emigrate to Palestine, admitted the minister, would cause extra headaches. Even Ginzberg’s request that 600 children be allowed to emigrate to Palestine was excessive. “Look,” offered Ginzberg in his affable, fast-talking New Yorker manner, “my government wants this settled. If you help me, I’ll help you in your mission to Washington. I’ll write to Hildring and sort you out.” The minister believed him. “That sounds very acceptable,” he replied, speculating that perhaps 250 children could be admitted every month. “You’ve been unnecessarily handsome in understanding our position. We’ll support the conference.” McNeil’s only condition was that the original term in the Paris Agreement—that the money would “be devoted to the rehabilitation and resettlement of non-repatriable victims of German action”—should remain unaltered. Neither Palestine nor the Jewish distribution agencies would be mentioned.
Elated, Ginzberg sought out the three other representatives delegated by the eighteen-nation conference with responsibility for settling the issue: Czech, Yugoslav and French. During an expensive lunch, Kilvana, the Czech, revealed to Ginzberg, “I do everything the Yugoslav tells me.” Over another “fancy” meal, Bartos, the Yugoslav diplomat, explained, “So long as there’s no money for Tito’s enemies, we’ll support you.” The French, Ginzberg decided, would not be a problem: “We’d just given them a big slice of money.” Shuttling between the diplomats in London, Ginzberg, invoking the “deep interest of my government,” had negotiated by June 7 the draft agreement that would be formally considered by the conference in Paris on June 11. The money, it was agreed, would be used not for compensation but for “rehabilitation and resettlement.” Anticipating that he would be able to “guide” Philippe Pérrier’s chairmanship, Ginzberg congratulated himself and traveled to France.
In London, Douglas Mackillop, a Treasury official nominated as the British representative, was irritated by Jewish agitation and complaints. Jewish groups had protested to British officials about their “grievous disappointment” that no special mention had been made in the original Paris Agreement about their plight. Nor, they complained, was there an explicit promise to compensate Jews for the Nazis’ theft of Jewish property worth billions of dollars or an explicit statement of the right of the Jews to administer their own funds. To Mackillop’s annoyance, Jewish petitions and meetings had urged politicians to recognize that “most of the ‘heirless’ property of Nazi victims in neutral countries consists of property belonging to Jews” and it should be secured for their benefit. Now, capping all that irritation, came the arrival of American zeal in the person of Ginzberg. “The United States delegate,” Mackillop noted to his colleagues, “will be a very active-minded young Jew who is by all accounts anxious to secure the handling of all the moneys allocated to Jewish beneficiaries by the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the American Joint Distribution Committee.” Allowing those agencies to administer the funds, he grumbled, was distinctly “unwelcome in view of the record of these organizations in connection with illegal immigration into Palestine.” Worst of all, Ginzberg was guilty of seeking money for Austrian and German Jews and his proposed agreement would distinguish between Jewish and non-Jewish victims.
Mackillop’s proposal, to find a Jewish group who opposed Ginzberg and manipulate them in Britain’s favor, aroused Waley’s concern. On the eve of Mackillop’s departure to Paris, he was urged by Waley to bear in mind American passion for the idea that the money should be used to resettle Jews, especially in Palestine. Unimpressed, Mackillop coldly ignored the advice.
In Paris, Ginzberg enthusiastically introduced himself to Mackillop. The Scotsman, he decided, was “unexciting” and clearly burdened by the eight children he had fathered. For his part, the British representative was depressed by Ginzberg’s news. The three delegates from France, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, chortled Ginzberg, supported his plan, and so did Hector McNeil, the British Foreign Office minister. “McNeil did not tell me he supported you,” intoned Mackillop, proffering a piece of paper. “Here’s my proposal. Somewhat different from yours.” Ginzberg’s ire was palpable. “Let’s settle our differences in private this evening,” suggested Mackillop in retreat.
That evening Ginzberg confronted the prejudice of the Foreign Office. There could be no mention of the Jews as beneficiaries, insisted Mackillop, nor could the agreement support their resettlement in Palestine, nor could the money be distributed by Jewish organizations. “The money should be distributed by governments,” said Mackillop.
At once excited and furious, Ginzberg bluffed: “My instructions from Washington are to formally withdraw from the conference if any attempt is made to delay distributing the money.” Staggered by the American’s ultimatum, the British official sat quietly as Ginzberg continued, “Involving governments as the distributors means delay, and the Swiss have agreed to advance the money explicitly for those beneficiaries.” Uneasy and acknowledging that he was isolated, Mackillop scrambled together a compromise: the American Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency would not be mentioned in the formal agreement as administering 90 percent of the fund but could be nominated in associated letters of instruction to the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees as the agencies to distribute the money. However, the funds would not be released until there was an approved resettlement program; and, although Palestine would not be mentioned, there could be a phrase indicating that the money was to help the Jews “in finding new and permanent homes.” “Agreed,” Ginzberg said with a smile.
In his report to London, Mackillop would boast that Ginzberg’s plan had been partially sabotaged, but that did not prevent his acceptance of the American’s generosity. Just before signing the agreement on June 14, Ginzberg visited the American embassy’s commissary and brought a box of chocolate bars. “These are for your eight children,” Ginzberg told Mackillop. “But you can have them only after you’ve signed. Otherwise it’ll be seen as a bribe.” Without embarrassment, Mackillop a
ccepted the gift. Later that day he successfully won postponement of a plan to help the Hungarian Jews on the ground that it was “awkward.” The Swiss, commented the Scotsman on his return to London, deserve sympathy for the problems that beckoned. Untroubled, Ginzberg returned to New York content that he had contributed toward the survivors’ relief. All that remained was to secure the money from the neutrals.
Under the Paris Agreement, Philippe Pérrier, the French chairman, had been nominated by the five governments to recover the $25 million and the heirless assets. On the assumption that all of the assets were Jewish in origin, 95 percent, it had been agreed, would be used for Jewish rehabilitation and resettlement. Pérrier’s letter to Bern was dispatched on August 20. Switzerland, like the other neutral countries, was asked to “take all necessary action to facilitate the identification, collection and distribution of these assets which have arisen out of a unique condition in international law and morality.” The Swiss were invited to act with “understanding and energy.”
Choosing France as the representative was in the circumstances not astute. Ever since the Washington Accord had been signed, Swiss politicians had denigrated the French, accusing them of stealing Belgium’s gold, for which Switzerland had had to pay compensation. Outraged by Swiss deceit, Henri Hoppenot, the French ambassador in Switzerland, urged his government to release a dossier proving the Swiss dishonesty. “The present cowardice of the Finance Ministry,” he exclaimed in a coded telegram to Paris, “is a disservice to our prestige and ensures that no one will take our work seriously.” The silence from Paris, Hoppenot knew, was related to the continuing negotiations for loans. By 1949, Switzerland would have loaned SF790 million to European countries and France would receive by far the largest share, SF340 million. Hoppenot’s complaint about the “finance administration’s desire to coddle the powers in the Swiss National Bank” was ignored.
While the British had deliberately remained silent about heirless assets, convinced that “the atmosphere might not be particularly favorable,” Irwin Mason, a U.S. diplomat, was dispatched to Bern to negotiate the speedy release of the heirless assets. “Moral pressure,” he was told, was the only weapon available.
Max Gottschalk, a foreign affairs consultant for the American Jewish Committee, had discovered during his visit to Switzerland in May 1946 the limitations of moral pressure as a means of obtaining the heirless assets. Meeting Armand Braunschvig, the vice-president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Associations, Gottschalk was struck by the timidity of the Jewish leaders. Cowed by native anti-Semitism and shamed by the association’s wartime failure to protest more vigorously about the expulsion of foreign Jews, Braunschvig had in 1945 unquestioningly repeated gossip from fellow Jews and Swiss bankers: “There’s not a large amount of heirless assets.” One year after the war, as reports accumulated about missing Jews, Braunschvig revised his assessment. One Swiss shoe manufacturer reported that no word had been heard from any of his Jewish representatives, who were known to control seventy-five bank accounts in Switzerland. Another Swiss reported that the owner of property worth SF2 million had disappeared and his possessions were being administered by a bank. The heirless assets were now estimated to be worth $38 million. Gottschalk questioned whether Swiss law would allow their transfer to the survivors. The Swiss courts, he was initially told, could declare victims dead and authorize the transfer of their assets to survivors. But in May 1946 he heard that under Swiss law the heirless assets would revert to the government of the depositor’s nation.
That unforeseen advice was also sent to Eli Ginzberg by Mason of the State Department. Under Article 22 of a Swiss law of 1891, reported Mason, the Swiss government did not control the “ultimate disposition of assets in Switzerland of foreigners who died without heirs.” However, he said, Switzerland’s secrecy laws would prevent any foreign government from claiming the heirless assets. The only solution would be to secure the agreement of the other countries to waive their claims and call the money “unclaimed funds” rather than heirless assets. Ginzberg’s recommendation was artless: if the other governments refused to oblige, the Swiss government should change its laws.
Ginzberg’s solution seemed unexceptionable to the lawyers in Washington. Pressured by the Jewish lobby, Congress had recently amended the Trading with the Enemy Act to allow European Jews to recover possessions that had been seized as enemy property in the United States by the Alien Property Custodian. No one in the State Department doubted that, with goodwill, the Swiss could find a satisfactory legal remedy, especially after Stucki’s signed promise to “examine the question sympathetically.” With that hope, the State Department wrote to Stucki on July 10. By then, Stucki’s department had received a succession of letters from U.S. diplomats protesting about the plight of former German citizens who were unable to obtain their money from Swiss bank accounts, insurance policies and trusts blocked by the Compensation Office. The latest letter sought an explanation of why the Compensation Office was continuing to demand that claimants produce documentary proof of their loss of German nationality or that a relative had died in the gas chambers. That proof, submitted the State Department, did not exist. Stressing the “entirely unprecedented situation,” Stucki was asked to “recognize the urgent and immediate necessity” of devising procedures to transfer the heirless assets to the survivors.
Regardless of his own difficulties after his return from Washington, Stucki did not dispute Switzerland’s obligation toward the Jews. “There is a moral obligation and I believe that the problem must be pursued with energy,” he noted, proposing that the government introduce a new law to secure and transfer the heirless assets. By then, Stucki was considering a thirteen-page proposal delivered by Dr. Franz-Josef Bienenfeld, a British lawyer representing the World Jewish Congress. Some heirless assets, he suggested, should be immediately freed to help 9,500 Jewish refugees in Switzerland, and the Swiss banks should be protected by a new law from penalization from any future claims for handing over the heirless assets.
Franz Kappeler, a senior official in the Political Department, unquestioningly accepted the need for a solution despite obstacles and conflicting claims. While the Allies expected the neutral countries to give $25 million and the heirless assets to the Jews, he noted, the Polish and Czech governments had asked the Swiss earlier in the year for the assets deposited in Switzerland by their citizens who had died during the war. In summary, Kappeler identified the major obstacle: while the banks needed to establish the amount of heirless assets, they had difficulties in establishing whether or not a depositor was actually dead because so many foreigners had given instructions that they were not to be contacted. Any investigation by the banks to discover whether their customers had survived the war might endanger those people, he wrote. One solution, he suggested, was to retain some of the heirless assets to pay those who reappeared. In the meantime, he expected the amount of heirless assets to be established soon because most of the inheritors of other accounts would claim their deposits. That summary was incontrovertible and fair. Since there was no predetermined legal solution, any settlement required careful thought. Yet in his conclusions, Kappeler, a pro-Nazi during the war, revealed disdain for the Allies’ plan: “It should not be assumed that just because a depositor was Jewish he would have desired that his legacy would be used for repatriable refugees.” Nevertheless, he suggested that a conference of banks, lawyers, notaries, trustees and their associations be summoned for discussions that would lead to legislation.
Four days later, on August 3, all of Switzerland’s banks, lawyers, notaries and trustees were asked by the Political Department to estimate the amount of heirless assets. While appreciating the work involved, the department added, “It is vital to acknowledge the undertakings given in Washington and the political importance which the Allies attribute to the issue.”
Clearly appalled that the government contemplated a breach of their secrecy, the Bankers Association reacted with a mixture of artful ingenuity and defiance
. Mentioning their “surprise” about Stucki’s undertaking on heirless assets—“which we were unaware of until now”—the association curtly listed the legal requirements to establish an heirless asset: namely, documentary proof that the depositor was dead and that there were no heirs. “No,” scribbled the Political Department official, criticizing the association’s conditions as too restrictive. In their counterproposal, the association suggested that the government should ask the Allies what they were doing to discover heirless assets in their countries. “It seems to us that the neutral states cannot do more than the signatories at the reparations conference.”
“That’s true,” commented the official at the Political Department, understanding Switzerland’s position—that the country should implement the accord to the same extent as the Allies. The idea of shifting the fate of the heirless assets onto the Allies shone with advantages.
The Swiss reply on the heirless assets was handed to the French embassy on September 11, 1946. The government, wrote Petitpierre, had studied the Allies’ request “sympathetically” and would consult the federal authorities about the legal issues. In the meantime, the government was undertaking inquiries to discover “the approximate number and amounts of heirless estates in question.”
Guy de Rham, Stucki’s assistant, approached the banks, the insurance companies and the Swiss Lawyers Association for information. The banks and insurance companies were expected to produce estimates of the amount of heirless assets, although the lawyers had instantly refused to breach the confidentiality of their clients. That, followed by the notaries’ similar refusal to cooperate, looked suspicious. In private, Schwab and Stucki had heard whispers that not only banks and corporations but also Swiss individuals—lawyers, business associates, notaries and accountants—had diverted into their own or specially created accounts money held in trust for Jews who had disappeared. By its inaction, de Rham feared, the Swiss government was encouraging more people to steal those dormant accounts. Deciding the fate of the heirless assets had become embroiled with Switzerland’s attitude toward the Jews and the Germans.