U.S. Panel Mulls Action Against Swiss in Nazi Gold Case

WASHINGTON — Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) raised the prospect of a freeze on Swiss assets in the United States as a Senate committee on Thursday debated ways to deal with those who served as accomplices to one of history’s greatest robberies--Nazi Germany’s World War II plundering of gold from the state vaults of occupied countries and from Holocaust victims.

A U.S. government report on the issue published last week estimated the value of the $580 million in stolen gold at $5.6 billion in today’s prices and fingered the principal accomplices as neutral nations that knowingly purchased the loot and gave little or none of it back at the war’s end.

The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee took up the sensitive “what now” issue for the first time since the report was issued.

Several factors complicate the issue, not the least of which is the report’s finding that at least some of the stolen gold came from Holocaust victims. Jewish organizations have long claimed that as much as $7 billion in victims’ assets remains in the possession of the nation most heavily involved in the looted gold trade: Switzerland.

Another factor is that, like Switzerland, most of the countries involved are today among the United States’ close friends, including Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Turkey.

At Thursday’s hearings, the debate centered heavily on the Swiss case. D’Amato clearly favored a tough line. In his opening statement, he referred to a newspaper editorial suggesting that the Clinton administration freeze an appropriate amount of the $86 billion in Swiss private and public assets in the United States if the Swiss electorate fails next year to pass a referendum approving a $4.7-billion fund to help the world’s needy.

The fund is one of a series of actions that the Swiss have taken over the last year to correct its wrongs during World War II and blunt international criticism about its role in dealing with looted Nazi gold and financing the German war machine.

D’Amato quickly added that he would not endorse freezing the Swiss assets “at this time.” But he noted that several U.S. cities, including New York and Chicago, are reviewing their financial links with Union Bank of Switzerland after reports that a security guard had interrupted employees of the bank shredding World War II-era papers.

And to the consternation of many, it was the security guard, not the bank, who was seen as the villain in Switzerland. The 28-year-old guard, Christoph Meili, was fired from his job, investigated for violating the country’s strict bank secrecy laws (he took documents to a Jewish organization) and quickly became the object of death threats.

“This is why we’re concerned,” D’Amato said Thursday. “The [Swiss] actions don’t match their words.”

D’Amato also raised the possibility of reopening a 1946 agreement on disposition of the looted Nazi gold that required the Swiss to return only $58 million, even though U.S. negotiators involved in the agreement estimated that Switzerland held more than four times that amount.

Undersecretary of Commerce Stuart E. Eizenstat, the principal author of last week’s report, urged a more measured course, calling for a policy of cooperation rather than confrontation with Switzerland on the issue.

“This is a time for soul-searching, a time for absorbing the contents of this report and for actions to help the victims,” he said.

Testifying before the committee, Eizenstat called for an immediate redistribution to Holocaust survivors of the remaining recaptured Nazi gold still held by the victorious World War II allies. This gold, estimated at $70 million, is claimed by several countries once occupied by the Nazis, but Eizenstat said that the United States would urge the nations to waive these claims so the money could be distributed quickly to victims.

“The average age of Holocaust survivors is about 80, so there is a need for urgent action,” he said.

He also urged other neutral countries to create funds to compensate Holocaust victims and their heirs, noting that Portugal had provided only $4 million of the $51 million in Nazi gold initially sought by the allies and Spain $114,000 of an estimated $30 million, while Turkey has paid back nothing of an estimated $5 million.