Holocaust Money in Swiss Banks

The offer of the three Swiss Banks - Union Bank of Switzerland, Swiss Bank Corporation and Credit Suisse to pay $600 million to Holocaust victims is insulting. 90 percent of the money represent interest over a period of over 50 years that the Banks refused to acknowledge that there was any money to return.

In 1934, a year after Hitler's rise to power sent tremors of fear across Europe, the Swiss legislature passed a law guaranteeing anonymity to anyone who transferred his savings to a Swiss bank. Soon deposits were coming in from all over Europe, particularly from Jews who feared the Germans would plunder their savings.

It appears there was a conspiracy between Nazi Germany and Switzerland to lure Jews under cover of confidentiality, to send their money to Swiss banks, who in due course sent the details to Germany. Who thus forced the Jews to part with their savings under torture in the concentration camps and death camps.

Those Jews, who somehow managed to reach the Swiss frontier in order to re-join their assets, were refused entry by the Swiss authorities and were turned over to the German police. We asked Switzerland the Biblical question: Do you murder and also inherit?

What remained in some Swiss banks is just a fraction of the original total.

When after the war, survivors or heirs of depositors came to claim their assets, the bankers invoked the same law of confidentiality to block any payment. They even required death certificates for those who perished in the death camps.

Available records now only cover 10 percent of the deposit account. The bankers claim that the rest of the records were destroyed in the normal course of business.

Moreover, Switzerland received the looted assets of concentration camp victims, and in return gave Germany hard currency to buy war material from Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Turkey.

These dealings enabled the Germans to prolong the war for two years.

Once the war was over with the defeat of Germany, it was wrong for the greedy bankers to hold onto deposits made during the Holocaust and the profits earned by dealing with the Germans. Morally and legally, all that money belongs to Germany's victims.

A fair settlement must include the return of all Holocaust deposits, not merely those few for which records have survived.

No settlement can possibly be defended if it allows the Holocaust to stand as a profit making enterprise for the Swiss banks.

NAY, SWITZERLAND MUST PAY DOUBLE FOR ATTEMPTING TO ROB THOSE WHO PUT THEIR TRUST IN THE HONESTY OF THE SWISS BANKING SYSTEM.

I am an Iraqi who has been living in Brazil for the past thirty-five years. But, whenever I have the opportunity, either in London, where I have my two sisters and a brother, or in Tel-Aviv, where I have my mother and other brother, I read it all and enjoy it so much - as it makes me remember my home life in Baghdad and the people I knew then.

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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Albertine Joory (nee Sawdayee)