This is an essential timeline of the events related to the international dispute on the handling and recovering of the Holocaust assets, with a special focus on Switzerland. It is constantly updated.
18.7.01 -- Three years after the global settlement, the first payments to Holocaust victims may finally happen, NY judge Ed Korman decided. A first sum of 43 million dollars will be distributed in the very next days. The Swiss banks have long paid the 1.25 billion dollars settlement sum into a blocked account, but procedural issues in the US and disagreements between beneficiaries had so far blocked the distribution of the money.
17.4.1 -- Almost three years after the final settlement between the Jewish organizations and the Swiss banks, and after having been delayed by a series of legal quarrels in the US, payments to claimants in the Holocaust Assets dispute should finally start this fall. The four agencies that will manage and distribute the $1.25 billion paid by the Swiss banks have been presented today in New York and Tel Aviv. The Claim Resolution Tribunal will handle $800 million to compensate the Holocaust victims (or their heirs) that had Swiss bank accounts (21'000 such accounts have been identified). The rest of the money will be distributed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Claims Conference in New York, and the International Migration Organization in Geneva. These funds will benefit both Jewish and non-Jewish, such as forced laborer during WW2 or refugees who were denied entry into Switzerland. Over 560 000 people have submitted a claim, and claims can still be put forward at swissbankclaims.com until the end of the Summer.
5.2.1 -- The Swiss Bankers Association has published today at dormantaccounts.ch a new list of 21 000 bank accounts having a "possible" link to the victims of Nazism. It is the third list published by the SBA.
16.1.1 -- A strong controversy is unfolding in the US-based Jewish journal "Commentary" on the issue of WW2 restitution and reparation. Last September, senior editor Gabriel Schoenfeld published a sharp and well-documented piece called "A Growing Scandal" where he analyzed the "continually expanding list of Holocaust restitution projects" and the "questionable nature of some of the claims" and criticized attorneys, politicians, and Jewish organizations. "To reprove Swiss neutrality from an office in Washington five decades after the fact, without considering the alternative and what it would have entailed, is to indulge in the worst kind of armchair moralizing", he writes about Switzerland's role in WW2. Schoenfeld's article has attracted detailed reactions -- published in this month's issue -- including a strong disagreement from US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Eizenstat.
11.1.01 -- The Swiss Bankers Association will publish on Jannuary 31st on the Internet a new list of 26 000 names of holders of heirless funds. It is the third list of its kind, and some details about the format of the publication still have to be discussed beforehand in judge Korman's courtroom in Brooklyn.
5.1.01 -- The first court discussions took place in New York on the subject of the compensations for the lawyers that worked on the Holocaust assets dispute. Judge Korman has decided to take more time to examin the issue. Some lawyers, such as Ed Fagan and Robert Swift, are asking for multimillion-dollar compensations. Other, bigger firms have suggested to use the money to endow university chairs on human rights and Holocaust history.
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