- NEW YORK -- A federal judge
on Wednesday approved a $21.9 million award to heirs of two wealthy families
victimized by the Holocaust -- by far the largest single claim paid thus
far in a case against Swiss banks accused of selling out to the Nazis.
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- U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman in Brooklyn approved
the payment based on the recommendation of a court-appointed tribunal that
disburses funds set aside under a settlement between Holocaust survivors
and the banks. Lawyers said the previous high for an award was about $4
million.
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- In a report dated Wednesday, the tribunal called the
award "unique in its size" and "a striking example of the
widespread betrayal of Jewish clients by the Swiss banks."
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- Holocaust survivors and their families sued Credit Suisse,
UBS AG and other Swiss banks, accusing them of stealing, concealing or
sending to the Nazis hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Jewish holdings
and destroying bank records to cover the paper trail. In 1998, Korman approved
a $1.25 billion settlement and appointed the tribunal to process thousands
of claims.
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- The $21.9 million award stems from a claim by Holocaust
survivor Maria Altmann, 89, of Los Angeles, and about two dozen unnamed
heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and Otto Pick, both major shareholders in
a large sugar refinery in Austria before World War II.
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- Altmann -- Bloch-Bauer's niece -- "is very gratified,"
said her attorney, E. Randol Schoenberg. "It's a very generous award."
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- In 1938, with Austria on the brink of a Nazi takeover,
Bloch-Bauer, Pick and their families sought to protect their interest in
the refinery by transferring their shares to a bank in Zurich.
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- The bank guaranteed the shares would not be sold without
the families' consent. But after family members were arrested or fled the
country, the banks bowed to pressure to transfer the shares to a German
investor in a Nazi campaign to "Aryanize" Jewish-owned businesses,
the tribunal report said.
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- The case demonstrated that "having marketed themselves
to the Jews of Europe as a safe haven for their property, Swiss banks repeatedly
turned Jewish-owned property over to the Nazis in order to curry favor
with them," the tribunal wrote.
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- No records of the Jewish shareholders' deal with the
bank were found in its files. Instead, the tribunal relied solely on documents
provided by the heirs and independent archives.
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- "There was no record of this, which is significant
because we've been suspicious all along that the banks destroyed an enormous
amount of information," said attorney Burt Neuborne, a court-appointed
representative for survivors worldwide.
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- Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Altmann
could sue the Austrian government to retrieve $150 million worth of family
paintings stolen by the Nazis. The parties were in mediation this week
in California over the six Gustav Klimt paintings now hanging in the Austrian
Gallery, including a portrait of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer.
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- In the Swiss bank case, Holocaust survivors and their
heirs so far have received more than $254 million in awards. The average
award has amounted to about $130,000.
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