Fighting for Justice Fighting for Justice Dutch Jews, Their Life Insurance Policies and the Second World War
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Grüter Regina Regina Grüter Fighting for Justice for Fighting Fighting for Justice Dutch Jews, their life insurance policies and the Second World War 1 Fighting for Justice Dutch Jews, their life insurance policies and the Second World War Regina Grüter © 2020 Regina Grüter This is a translation of the greater part of Strijd om gerechtigheid. Joodse verzekeringstegoeden en de Tweede Wereldoorlog, Boom, Amsterdam, 2015 (ISBN 979089536686 NUR 680) No part of this book may be reproduced in any way without the written permission of the author. Figng for Justice 2 Introduction 5 About the English translation 13 Part I Disenfranchisement and the Expropriation of Insurance Assets 14 1. The Writing on the Wall 14 The insurance industry during the German occupation 15 Dutch Jews and their life insurance policies 19 The anti-Jewish decrees 23 A foreshadowing of what was to come 27 2. Liro, the Jewish Insurees and the Insurers 34 ‘Escape policies’ 34 The mandatory registration and surrender of policies 39 The surrender: ein kurzfristiges Inkasso? 46 Cooperation and opposition: an evaluation 54 Part II Legal redress after the liberation 60 3. Drawing up the Balance 60 The decimated Jewish community 60 The insurers in a tough spot 72 Negotiations with the government 79 4. Postwar Legal Redress 90 The insurers’ strategy 90 ‘The light breaks through’ 92 Legal redress for ‘absentees’ 106 ‘Redress in redress’ in associations and foundations 117 Postwar redress of insurance policies: evaluation and comparison 123 Part III Fifty years later: legal redress reconsidered 127 5. The Restitution Movement and the Controversy in the Netherlands 127 Switzerland in the dock 130 The controversy in the Netherlands 134 6. The Dutch Association of Insurers and the Handling of Claims 139 The Association of Insurers and the insurance companies 139 3 The handling of claims and enquiries 144 Cooperation with Jewish organizations 156 7. The Ministry of Finance and the insurance companies 163 ‘Broad consultations’ and other contacts with the insurers 165 The ‘Veegens policies’ and the Association’s questions 168 8. The agreement between the CJO and the Association 180 Growing confidence 182 Complicating factors: the Scholten Commission and the WJC 184 Negotiations are accelerated 189 The final arrangement 199 Reaction of the Ministry of Finance and the government 204 Epilogue 208 Archives consulted 212 Bibliography 214 Newspapers and Periodicals 220 4 Introduction On the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, in 1995, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) appealed for an investigation into the property, cash and assets that had been taken from Holocaust victims and not returned to survivors or their heirs after the Second World War. The following year was like the proverbial calm before the storm. But when the silence broke, the issue mushroomed into an intense international debate. Then, a forceful campaign was mounted to hold European financial institutions accountable. Swiss banks were the first to face demands for clarification of their wartime policies and information on dormant bank assets that had not been paid to their owners. European insurance companies were the next to come under fire. The discussion spread by way of Israel to European countries, including the Netherlands. It took some time for the Dutch Jewish community and Dutch politicians, financial institutions and journalists to grasp the full magnitude of the scandal. As emotions ran high in the Jewish community, others grew increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. In late 1996, the Dutch insurance company Aegon received its first claim on two unpaid policies from a man living in Tel Aviv, the son of a Jewish policyholder who had been killed during the war. More claims followed in 1997, targeting Aegon and other insurance companies. In the meantime, Dutch insurers were watching developments in the United States with consternation. Three insurers (Aegon, ING and Fortis) had commercial interests there and faced new legislation in California, New York and Florida requiring insurance firms to inform state officials how they had dealt with the policies held by Jews persecuted during the war. Insurers that did not comply risked losing their license to do business in these states. There was action at the federal level, too. Congress heard testimony from Holocaust survivors and set up investigative committees. The legislature took measures aimed at forcing European banks and insurers to refund dormant bank accounts and unpaid insurance assets. U.S. lawyers sued these financial institutions by means of a type of lawsuit seldom seen in Europe: class actions. In the late 1990s, numerous class action suits were filed in the United States, claiming sums in the billions of dollars. In the latter half of 1998, the WJC and U.S. federal insurance commissioners created the International Commission for Holocaust-Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC). It came to be known as the Eagleburger Commission, after its chairman, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. Its purpose was to establish an international procedure for processing unpaid insurance policies held by victims of the Nazis. European insurance companies were expected to join the Eagleburger Commission, and participating insurers were required to contribute substantial amounts to finance its costly work and to pay into funds from which claimants could receive benefits. However, the 5 divergent interests of the participating parties hampered the commission’s effectiveness and their internal conflicts frequently found their way into the news headlines. The WJC widely propagated the idea that Jews who had survived the Third Reich had been systematically deprived of their rightful possessions and financial assets. Relying on its good contacts with politicians, lawyers and journalists, the WJC remained the principal advocate of the scandal for several years. This did not go down well in the Netherlands, where the insurance companies and Jewish community representatives alike regarded the WJC’s approach as needlessly blunt and counterproductive. The WJC’s appeal for a boycott of Aegon, in 1999, was a low point in relations between the World Jewish Congress and Dutch Jewish community leaders. It was also a deeply worrying move in the eyes of the Dutch government and insurance companies. The Restitution Movement in the USA and the discussion it unleashed the world over generated a rash of activity in the Netherlands. Dutch Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm created several commissions of inquiry and tasked them with investigating how legal redress and restitution had been executed in the Netherlands after the war. He assigned an inquiry into insurance-related matters to the Begeleidingscommissie Onderzoek Financiële Tegoeden WO-II in Nederland [Supervisory Committee on the Investigation of Financial Assets from WWII in the Netherlands].1 The life insurance companies and the Dutch Association of Insurers (frequently referred to simply as ‘the Association’ in this book) also took action. First and foremost, they needed to ascertain what the insurance companies had done with policies during the Second World War and how they had reacted to the disenfranchisement and plunder of their Jewish clients. Had their predecessors complied with the Nazi occupiers’ demands and surrendered so-called ‘Jewish policies’? An even more pertinent question was whether they had returned the stolen insurance assets after the liberation or instead pocketed the money that rightly belonged to persecuted and murdered Jews. Only with these facts could the Association respond fairly to claims and enquiries regarding potential unpaid insurance policies and resolve the issue in the USA. Such knowledge would also enable the Association to parry the accusations in the media that it saw as damaging to the insurance industry’s reputation. From 1998 onwards, the Association and the Centraal Joods Overleg (CJO) [Dutch Central Board of Jewish organizations in the Netherlands] gradually arrived at the conclusion that after the war, large scale legal redress had indeed taken place. However, they did discover shortcomings in that complicated and prolonged process. As 1999 drew to a close, they agreed to the settlement of 1 In the late 1990s, the Dutch government installed several commissions of inquiry named after their chairpeople: Van Kemenade, Scholten, Kordes and Ekkart. Their task was to look into the postwar restitution of belongings, properties, assets and art robbed from Jews. 6 unpaid insurance policies, for which a total of NLG 50 million was made available to the Jewish community. Part of this arrangement was the creation of an independent foundation which was to investigate individual claims and information requests regarding unpaid insurance assets and benefits. This foundation was called Stichting Individuele Verzekeringsaanspraken Sjoa (SIVS) [Holocaust Foundation for Individual Insurance Claims]. Unfortunately for the Dutch insurers and the CJO, however, the WJC and other American parties refused to acknowledge their agreement. A difficult process ensued in which the Association joined the Eagleburger Commission as a representative of the Dutch life insurers. Both the CJO and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which appointed a special envoy for Holocaust Affairs, supported the insurers. The foreign affairs and finance ministries felt at this point that not only economic interests were at stake, but also the credibility and diplomatic interests of the Dutch State. In 2012,