Date: February 5th, 1997
On this day with SHAC, multiple Swiss banks were presented with a lawsuit stemming from the withholding of funds deposited by victims of Nazi persecution before and during the Second World War. In 1995, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) began negotiations on behalf of various Jewish organizations with Swiss banks and the Swiss government over dormant Jewish World War II bank accounts. The effort, led by Edgar Bronfman, the heir to the Seagram’s fortune, entered a class-action lawsuit in Brooklyn, NY combining several already established suits in New York, California, and the District of Columbia. The original suits arose from grievances of Holocaust survivors and their heirs against Swiss banks. They alleged improper difficulties in accessing these accounts because of requirements such as death certificates (typically non-existent for Holocaust victims), along with deliberate efforts on the part of some Swiss banks to indefinitely retain the balances. This denial of funds questioned the ethical processes of multiple institutions as it was confined to a certain ethnic group and was of an oppressive nature.
On Nov. 22, 2000, Judge Edward R. Korman announced settlement of this case with his approval of a plan featuring the payment of $1.25 billion into funds controlled by the Israeli Banking Trust. Judah Gribetz was appointed Special Master to administer the plan, which is sometimes called the Gribetz Plan after its chief author.
By Oct. 2009, some $490 million had been paid out to individual claimants, and acceptance of new claims had been discontinued for some time. This amount not only includes funds deposited into Swiss banks by purported victims, but also includes compensation for labor purportedly performed in displaced-persons camps, the value of purported looted assets, compensation for persons purported to have sought admission to Switzerland as refugees and to have been denied admission – both Jewish and non-Jewish – plus interest calculated on the claimed losses from the time of loss to the time of payment.