BEHIND THE HEADLINES Nazi gold gathering forces all nations to `examine consciences

LONDON, Dec. 1 (JTA) — As historians, politicians, Holocaust survivors and Jewish officials gathered here this week for an unprecedented international conference examining the movements of Nazi gold, few failed to grasp the meeting’s historical significance. As one Jewish leader observed, never before have so many nations come together “to consider how they might start on the road to justice for the Jewish people.” It is a search that dates back half a century. But it was not until last year, amid startling revelations about Switzerland’s wartime gold transactions and handling of Jewish assets, that the search came into focus and acquired a sense of urgency. More embarrassing disclosures have since spread all along the trail of Nazi gold, showing that other neutral nations either bought, hid or traded in Nazi loot as well. With each new turn, Jewish leaders have intensified their demands for a full historical accounting, both financial and moral. The three-day conference here — which drew representatives of 40 some countries and six non-governmental agencies — was a testament to how far that accounting has come. “There are 40 nations here to examine their consciences,” said
Lord Greville Janner, chairman of Britain’s Holocaust Educational Trust, who helped convince Britain’s ruling Labor Party to host the conference and persuaded several hedging countries to attend. “It’s not just Switzerland,” Janner, a Jew and former parliamentarian, said at a news conference. “It’s Germany, where it all began. It’s Russia, where there’s a great bounty of art which belonged to Nazi victims. It’s Britain, it’s the United States — all of us working together at last to cooperate.” While the gathering constitutes an achievement in itself, Jewish officials say the success of the conference ultimately will be measured by its ability to further the process of attaining moral restitution for victims of the Holocaust — specifically an acknowledgement of all the facts, of all wrongdoing and of a collective responsibility to find the truth. In that sense, the conference is not being viewed as a culminating point but as an intermediary step — a “way station,” as one official put it, on the road to complete justice. The conference is being held under the auspices of the Tri-partite Gold Commission, set up in 1946 by the United States, Britain and France to restore Nazi-looted gold to its rightful owners. Over the last 50 years, the commission has distributed 337 tons of looted gold — 98.6 percent of the amount in its pool — to 15 countries whose treasuries were plundered as the Nazis marched across Europe. Another 5.6 tons, worth between $60 and $70 million, is still held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and by the Bank of England. The commission froze its distribution last year after Jewish groups insisted that privately owned gold taken from Holocaust victims be returned to survivors or their heirs. While the conference, slated for Tuesday through Thursday, was expected to produce an agreement among the claimant countries to place the remaining gold into a fund to compensate Holocaust victims, Jewish officials set their sights on additional goals. Most notably, officials were seeking a commitment among all those attending to make all relevant historical files available, including the record of the Tripartite commission. “We have a mission which is beyond money,” said Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, which met in London prior to the Nazi gold conference. “There are moral issues here which have to take precedence,” he said. In fact, a proposal for full disclosure was expected to come from an unlikely corner. Special Ambassador Thomas Borer, Switzerland’s point man on the Nazi gold issue, said in an interview that he planned to formally propose to the conference that every nation come clean with all relevant archival documents. “We said at the very outset we want to know the truth,” Borer said, “but it’s very difficult if we can only rely on the Swiss archives.” Jewish leaders, for their part, welcomed the Swiss delegation’s decision to make the appeal. There were other plaudits for Switzerland this week. The World Jewish Congress and the WJRO invited Borer to a dinner for its delegates, and the Swiss envoy gave a speech that won rare praise from some of his nation’s harshest critics. Borer acknowledged that Switzerland handled the “initial allegations” concerning Switzerland’s wartime dealings in a “very, very poor way,” adding that it learned lessons “the hard way.” “But I’m proud that I can say that we took unprecedented measures and I’m also proud that I can say that we’ve lived up to our promises. “If you ask me if I’m satisfied with whatever we do,” he added, “I must tell you I am not because whatever our generation is doing today, it can never make up for the mistakes of other generations. We can be sorry, but we can never correct them.” While the London conference was not expected to single out Switzerland for its wartime activities or the way it has handled criticism, another conference being convened in New York next week almost certainly will. That conference, initiated by New York City Comptroller Alan Hevesi, who lost family members in the Holocaust, will examine moves by U.S. state and local governments to halt dealings with Swiss banks. Indeed, conferences appear to be the order of the day. The United States was expected this week to propose convening a follow-up to the London conference next April at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. As part of the broad inquiry into wartime trade and plunder, the conference in Washington would deal with “other assets” — most notably priceless art works confiscated by the Nazis. Looking further down the road, Bronfman said he would like to see yet another conference convened to bring closure to all these issues, perhaps within two to three years. He wants a historical commission, charged with gathering all the facts surrounding Nazi plunder and stolen Jewish wealth in every country, to report its finding for all to see. If that happens, he said, “the final chapter of World War II and the Holocaust can be written fairly and decently and honestly.”