Are the Heirless of the Holocaust Era Really Without Heirs?
How Genealogists Can Help
by Deborah Senn
[This article first appeared in Avotaynu: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, Vol. XIV, No. 2, Summer 1998.]
[The author of this article is the elected insurance commissioner of the State of Washington and chair of a working group investigating unpaid Holocaust-era insurance policies issued by a group of 15 European insurance companies. This story explains the problem and describes how Jewish genealogists will play a role in its resolution--Ed.]
I had long believed that I had lost no family in the Holocaust, but a friend once said to me, "Nonsense. There is no Jewish family in this world that is untouched by the Holocaust."
Last summer, I went to Belarus on a trip to research my family's history. In my father's birthplace of Zhlobin, I discovered that his family name, Semenovsky, and his mother's family name, Gerchikov, belonged to two of the most prominent families in that town. In 1943, 2,600 Jewish residents of Zhlobin and nearby Streshun were murdered by the Nazis. Numerous Semenovskys and Gerchikovs were among that number. No doubt, some were cousins--distant cousins, but cousins nonetheless.
In Our Own Back Yard
Claims against European banks and insurance companies are not the only sources of money due heirs of Holocaust victims; some exist within the United States and likely in other countries outside of Europe.
In 1987, I discovered that my great-grandaunt, who lived in New York State, in the 1930s had willed a portion of her estate to a grandnephew living in France and a grandniece living in Germany. When she died in 1942, the will was probated but it was impossible to locate the heirs because World War II was in progress. It was unlikely that any attempt was made to locate them after the war. The money was transferred to the Unclaimed Property Office of New York State where it remains today.
At the time I discovered this unclaimed money, I contacted the state authorities indicating that my genealogical research demonstrated that the two were Holocaust victims (one died in Sobibor, the other in Auschwitz), but I could identify their closest kin. They informed me that a claim would be accepted only if the normal requirements were met--proof of death of the named persons and all the proper records showing kinship between the claimants and the named heirs.
This would have been an impossible task because of the same problems Holocaust survivors are having proving kinship to owners of Swiss bank accounts and insurance policies.
Gary Mokotoff, AVOTAYNU publisher
Because so many perished in the Holocaust, because so many families were destroyed, those dealing with attempts to recover lost assets often speak of a category called "the heirless." Unrecovered assets for whom no rightful owners or heirs are currently known are viewed as synonymous with the nonexistence of heirs.
European insurance companies and Swiss banks have expressed a willingness to create a humanitarian fund to compensate for "heirless" claims. The size of that fund will directly relate to the calculated magnitude of the losses. Any dormant accounts that remain unclaimed will probably go to such a fund.
Genealogy Can Change the Definition of Heirless
My own experience in Belarus led me to rethink the concept of heirless. As an attorney, I know that a "protocol of succession" exists in probate proceedings that extends far beyond the immediate family of the deceased. Why should we accept that those who perished, along with so many of their family members, died heirless? It may be time to take another look at the issues of asset recovery and unpaid insurance claims from the Shoah and ask the question: Are the heirless really without heirs?
I contend that there are fewer true heirless claims than one might think. It is just a matter of matching heirs to claims. Even more importantly, a successful search for heirs will increase the claimant base and move us toward a true accounting of the policies and bank accounts of the Holocaust era.
In the State of Washington, where I am insurance commissioner, we have survivors who lost dozens and, in some cases, hundreds of members of their extended families. But, they remember the names of their lost family members; they know what they did for a living, the businesses they owned, the banks with which they conducted their business.
The worldwide Jewish genealogical community can play a crucial role in this process. Through our experience and research methods, we genealogists can identify the "lost" heirs to dormant or unclaimed accounts and policies, increase the potential base of claimants, and ensure that survivors rightfully recover that which was stolen from their families. Perhaps most significantly, we can honor the memory of many victims of the Shoah by demonstrating that they are not heirless at all, but that we are their families.
Our Families Tried to Protect Their Assets
The Shoah resulted in the unspeakable death of millions of people in the Jewish community, the destruction and disruption of entire families. That is what we have dwelled upon, and that is what must never be forgotten. Only recently, though, we have also begun to understand the magnitude of the financial crimes that accompanied this genocide.
All over the European continent, families--our families--tried to protect their assets as World War II and the rise of Nazism loomed. Families in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland had the same types of assets as many families hold today.
First, they had insurance. This included life insurance, health insurance, and property and casualty coverage to protect their homes and businesses. Many European families in the 1930s even had dowry insurance. Like an annuity, dowry insurance was purchased when a baby girl was born. It matured when she was about 21 years old and was used to pay for her wedding.
Insurance policies were also used to protect assets. As the Nazis systematically stripped the Jewish community of its rights and property, insurance was seen as a way to protect those assets. Paper could be smuggled out of a country more easily than cash or jewelry. Gold and dollar-backed policies were purchased from insurers all over Europe--the German company, Allianz; the Italian company, Generali; the Swiss companies, Winterthur and Zurich; among many others.
So, too, Swiss bank accounts were used as a vehicle for protecting family assets.
Institutional Failure to Live Up to Promises Made
The financial crimes of the Holocaust include the voiding of basic protections that responsible and hardworking Jewish families had depended upon to carry them through the horrors and to give them a toehold on which to rebuild their lives afterwards.
Many people have toiled for years trying to recover lost property. Many of us are unaware of how difficult it has been. Not until several years ago, with the immense publicity surrounding the Swiss gold and bank accounts, did people begin to realize how assets were stolen and never returned.
We know that in November 1938, during Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues were destroyed all over Germany and Austria. Historical documents show that Jews sustained hundreds of millions of Reichmarks in damages, but were never able to collect on insurance claims. The Nazis merely absolved the insurers of liability and instead levied fines of more than a billion Reichmarks against the Jewish community for "causing" the violence and property damage.
We have heard stories of parents whispering about Swiss bank accounts to their children as they were separated in the camps. Yet, when some of these surviving children went to claim the accounts after the war, bankers told them that no such account existed.
Those who had bank or insurance claims have heard a variety of responses: Death certificates were necessary, the accounts or policies never existed, the records had been lost in the war. Some argued that the Nazis or post-war Communist regimes confiscated company assets and that the company was no longer liable.
The immediate post-war restitution process in West Germany was complicated, expensive, and often paid claims at greatly undervalued rates. Post-war conferences on reparations focused on the urgent need for refugee resettlement, rebuilding of European economies, and restitution of state assets seized by the Nazis. Attempted negotiations with the former Communist governments in Eastern Europe yielded little or nothing for survivors or their heirs. Finally There May Be Justice
Now, survivors are aged and some live in poverty. After 50 years, U.S. wartime archives are being opened for the first time. The opening of Soviet-bloc archives in recent years has produced more detailed and damning evidence of the great thefts that occurred.
In 1997, I chaired the National Association of Insurance Commissioners Working Group on Holocaust Insurance Issues, which held public hearings all over the United States. In city after city, we heard from survivors about how families had purchased insurance to protect their assets.
More than one survivor talked about how a mother would forego purchasing fish for the Sabbath dinner in order to pay the insurance premiums. Agents from Generali, an Italian insurance firm, went door to door all over Eastern Europe and sold policies. Generali was known as the "shtetl insurer."
After hearing dozens of survivors who have insurance policies tell how they were refused payment, ignored, and even thrown out of company offices after the war, I believe that no survivor ever needs to apologize for demanding what is rightfully his.
In both the Swiss bank and the insurance cases, the companies involved initially denied that they had dormant or unclaimed accounts or policies. Slowly the truth has emerged. The admitted number of dormant accounts increased as the pressure on the banks grew. In August 1997, the Swiss banks finally published a list of 20,000 dormant accounts. If any of these accounts remain unclaimed, they will be considered "heirless." The insurance issue is following a similar track. At first, some insurance companies claimed that they had only a "handful" of claims. Most have established a toll-free claims number but assert that they have received only a smattering of calls and that few represent valid claims. Now we are hearing that they have a substantial number of unredeemed policies in their records.
Many of the insurance companies still exist today, and some own American subsidiaries. For example, Allianz owns Fireman's Fund, Generali owns Business Men's Assurance of America, Winterthur owns Unigard Insurance, and Zurich is in the process of acquiring Farmers Insurance in the U.S. These business activities give American insurance commissioners the right and the influence to move this issue forward.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners insists upon a full accounting and publication of a complete list of all policyholders who purchased insurance in the decades prior to and during World War II. These lists will be matched against worldwide victim and survivor lists.
A Call for Action
I call upon Jewish genealogists around the world to join in a massive effort to help obtain justice, not only for the survivors and their direct heirs, but also for the so-called "lost heirs." We have the means to identify surviving generations and more distant next-of-kin so that justice may be done.
Sallyann Amdur Sack, president of the Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (AJGS), and I are working on a plan to contact Holocaust survivor organizations and worldwide Jewish genealogical societies in an effort to link them with the names of holders of unredeemed insurance policies. The plan has two basic elements:
- AJGS is developing a computer program that will match the names and families in the Family Tree of the Jewish People (FTJP) against existing and future lists of dormant bank accounts and unpaid insurance policies in order to identify and locate the heirs to these assets.
- We will issue a worldwide call to Holocaust survivors to contribute as much data as possible about their families and relatives to the Family Tree of the Jewish People.
When matches are made between names on the FTJP and the unclaimed assets, AJGS will notify the submitter of the family tree. In turn, it will be the responsibility of the submitter to tell his relatives about their possible status as next-of-kin. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners will explain how one may seek to establish their claims.
The modern pursuit of Jewish genealogy is slightly more than 20 years old. In the past, many felt that the Holocaust made the tracing of Jewish genealogy too daunting a task. Hitler and the Nazis tried to break the chain of Jewish family connections and Jewish history. The work we are doing and will do to reconstruct our histories will defeat them. We are reconnecting the broken links of that chain.
By joining in this task, AVOTAYNU readers honor those who died. They will not be a faceless parade, unconnected to anyone alive on earth today. They will be our aunts, our uncles, our cousins. They will be recognized for having gone to school, having had families, careers, and businesses. They will be remembered as caring for and protecting their loved ones. We will remember them fully and completely as the vital people they were.
Deborah Senn, the first U.S. Insurance Commissioner to raise the issue of unpaid Holocaust insurance claims, has been termed "the best Insurance Commissioner in the United States" by no less than Ralph Nader. She is nationally known for her efforts in health-care reform, women's access to health care, environmental-insurance cleanups, and protection of domestic violence victims. Her own family emigrated from Belarus in the early 1900s, and she took her first genealogical expedition to that country last summer.
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