Clinton makes it official: Ex-Swiss guard granted asylum

WASHINGTON, July 31 (JTA) — The night watchman who rescued Holocaust-era documents from the shredder of a Swiss bank now has an official home in the United States. President Clinton this week signed into law a bill unanimously adopted by both houses of Congress granting permanent U.S. residency status to Christoph Meili and his family. The action came on the heels of an announcement this week by the Union Bank of Switzerland that most of the documents recovered by Meili concern property maintenance and have nothing to do with dormant accounts of possible Holocaust victims. Meili, 29, was making his rounds as a night watchman at Union Bank of Switzerland in January when he discovered carts of Holocaust-era documents headed for the paper shredder. He secretly turned over some of them to a Jewish organization in Zurich — a move that created a storm of controversy in Switzerland, cost Meili his job and forced him to flee the country fearing for his life. After months of refusing to disclose the content of the documents, the bank said Monday that they were records of 31 properties held by a subsidiary bank in Germany, including three whose previous owners might have been Jewish. Reacting to the bank’s announcement at a Capitol Hill news conference convened by Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) on Wednesday, Meili accused the bank of failing to disclose the contents of all the files he rescued. He showed reporters a list of what he said were more than 45 Jewish-owned properties from the 1930s to 1945. “UBS is not telling the truth,” Meili said. The bank, however, stuck by its assertion Wednesday, saying the records related to properties owned by Eidgenoessische Bank, a Swiss bank it bought in 1945, and bore no relation to customer accounts. The relevance of the files will ultimately be determined by the Bergier Commission — a panel of historians examining the Swiss role in World War II. Earlier this month, the commission’s secretary-general said the rescued documents will help the investigation. D’Amato, for his part, threatened punitive measures against the Swiss banking giant unless it conducts a full inquiry into the destruction of the documents, drops a criminal investigation into Meili’s actions and apologizes to him. In a letter to Swiss President Arnold Koller, D’Amato, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, threatened to seek a review aimed at terminating or suspending the bank’s authority to operate in the United States. He also said he might request the departments of Justice and State to investigate whether the bank violated the terms of post-war agreements with the Allies dealing with the return of all German accounts. “We want to know what actions the Swiss government will take to right this injustice, what actions will be taken to hold him harmless for the fact that he has been without the ability to support his family and has been denied just compensation,” D’Amato said at the news conference. Responding to D’Amato on Thursday, Koller told a Swiss newspaper he sees no need to apologize to Meili. He said the Swiss government has no influence over Zurich prosecutors who are investing whether Meili broke bank secrecy laws. Commenting on Meili’s new U.S. residency status, D’Amato said, “I hope that this act, signed into law, lets him know that there is a grateful country, a grateful Congress and a president of the Untied States that recognizes his heroic act.” The legislation, he added, “will permit him the opportunity now to become gainfully employed, an opportunity that was taken from him.” Meili, the father of two young children, reportedly has received several job offers, including one from World Jewish Congress President Edgar Bronfman. Now that he is a permanent U.S. resident, he said he plans to look at his options. Accompanied by his wife Wednesday, Meili thanked D’Amato and Clinton, saying, “Now we are a little more safe here in the United States.”