Graham eyes bill on Holocaust-era insurance claims
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham said Tuesday he will explore legislation that would pressure insurers to pay out more Holocaust-era insurance claims, over protests from an official who negotiated international agreements to compensate survivors.
The South Carolina Republican told POLITICO he was convinced to move forward after a hearing Tuesday morning that focused on how victims and their families fared under an international agreement known as the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims.
“The hearing was very eye-opening,” he said.
The commission established in 1998 worked with European insurers to deliver $306 million in claims and $169 million in “humanitarian” payments. Its claims process ended in 2007.
Estimates for the present value of unpaid Holocaust-era insurance claims in Central and Eastern Europe range from about $2 billion to $25 billion, Congressional Research Service financial economics specialist Baird Webel told the Judiciary Committee.
Sam Dubbin, a lawyer who represents Holocaust survivors, urged the panel to take up legislation that would require insurers to publish the names of policyholders from that time and allow survivors and heirs to bring claims in court. Ninety-year-old Auschwitz survivor David Mermelstein urged the committee to act or "the insurance companies will be the heirs of the victims of the Holocaust."
Stuart Eizenstat, a former Clinton administration official who negotiated agreements to return assets to Holocaust victims, warned that legislation would have “potentially catastrophic, negative effects.”
Eizenstat said in testimony that it would leave elderly beneficiaries facing costly, likely unsuccessful litigation while undermining a U.S. government agreement that provided “legal peace."
Graham said he understood concerns about undercutting international agreements, but he was unpersuaded by Eizenstat’s pleas.
"This was an agreement to extinguish claims that was poorly done,” he said. “The fruits of the effort to me fall well short of what would be a fair outcome.”
The effort has the backing of Joel Greenberg, a founder of the trading firm Susquehanna and a major backer of Republican political campaigns, who was in the front row of the hearing.
Greenberg told POLITICO that the champions of the legislation are Florida Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. Scott also spoke at the hearing.
“The problem is the survivors, they never really had a political voice at all,” he said. “Someone has to speak for them."
