Documents May Show U.S. Role in Foiling Return of Swiss Assets

The U.S. government and its Allies may have played a role in preventing the proper return of Holocaust victims’ assets that were looted during World War II and hidden in Switzerland.

The suggestion of possible U.S. complicity comes from the World Jewish Congress amid a campaign against the Swiss Bankers Association to determine the whereabouts of assets belonging to Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

WJC and Jewish Agency for Israel officials met this week with the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which also is investigating the matter.

The Jewish officials gave the committee documents related to files unearthed in the U.S. National Archives. The files show American involvement in the transfer in and out of Switzerland after World War II of assets from Nazi-occupied territories, according to the WJC.

The declassified files chronicle a postwar intergency American program code- named “Project Safe Haven” and kept secret for 50 years, said Israel Singer, WJC secretary general, at a meeting Tuesday of the organization’s U.S. section.

The files include material on “plundered Jewish assets and accounts taken to Switzerland,” said Singer.

The project was directed by Allen Dulles, who later became the first director of the CIA, Singer added.

The files, said Elan Steinberg, WJC executive director, “will lead to some very pointed questions for the Swiss bankers. It guts their claims and assertions that only 774 dormant accounts are locked in their vaults from the Holocaust period.”

The files also raise questions about the U.S. and Allied role regarding the Nazi-looted assets that found a haven in Switzerland after the war, Steinberg said.

Singer said the investigation would expand to cover the “19 other countries where such assets were transferred.”

The WJC offensive against the Swiss Bankers Association is aimed at pressuring the bankers to adhere to an earlier agreement to open up the restitution process involving Jewish assets.

The WJC and the bankers group initially agreed to work together to investigate unclaimed accounts.

When the bankers dropped that idea and announced unilaterally in February that Swiss banks had some $32 million in as-yet unclaimed accounts that might have belonged to Jews who perished in the Holocaust, the WJC cried foul.

The WJC rejected the bankers’ conclusion and announced that it was considering leading a boycott against Swiss banks.

The WJC executive committee will take action on the boycott proposal in a month, Steinberg said.

The proposal “is modeled on the disinvestment policy that had been waged against the apartheid government of South Africa,” he said.

As part of its inquiry, the Senate Banking Committee sent a letter to the bankers association’s lawyers that contains some 15 questions about the group’s banking practices, Steinberg said.

According to a release from his office, Sen. Alfonse D’Amati (R-N.Y.), who heads the banking committee, has contacted the secretary of state, the CIA director, the secretary of the Treasury and the archivist of the United States as part of this inquiry.

The Swiss banks’ premium on privacy and the difficulty of producing proof of ownership of an account that once belonged to a Holocaust victim have made it difficult for descendants to identify or claim assets.

Compounding the difficulties in the restitution process, a leading Swiss bank may have destroyed its 1944 business records, according to documents located in the formerly secret Romanian intelligence agency that were made public in late February by the WJC.

“If wartime bank records were deliberately destroyed by a Swiss bank, the assertion by the Swiss Bankers Association that they can give a definitive presentation of dormant accounts is refuted,” the WJC said in a statement.