Word: bronfmans
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That incivility, especially from a country he considered honorable and sophisticated, helped spur Bronfman into a relentless campaign. "They had bought off groups before, and this was just a bigger bribe," he says. "I realized what they really wanted us to do was to take the money...
...boss was Edgar Bronfman. Heir to the Seagram spirits business, he had devoted his early years to building the company founded by his father into a multibillion-dollar empire. Only when his ardently Zionist father died in 1971 did Edgar rediscover his faith. For the past 20 years, he has expended much of his formidable energy and much of his time on the activities of the World Jewish Congress. Bronfman first transformed the relatively passive fund-raising charity into a prime mover of Jewish causes. He has personally bankrolled much of the organization's work and used his stature...
What turned this courtly, resolute advocate into the point man for reclaiming Jewish assets from Switzerland was a chair--or, more precisely, the lack of a chair. On Sept. 12, 1995, Bronfman went with Singer to a meeting in Bern. They wanted to ask the Swiss Bankers Association to investigate the dormant accounts of Holocaust victims. Without offering their visitors a seat, the bankers began to dictate their terms. They proposed turning over $32 million discovered in 774 Jewish accounts since the war and suggested that that would close the matter for good. "I don't think it occurred...
...after five decades and under immense international pressure, the Swiss stone wall is beginning to crack. Last week in Zurich, Edgar Bronfman Sr., president of the World Jewish Congress, based in New York City, produced a list--secret until recently--of long-ago account holders, and turned it over to a committee set up jointly last May by the Swiss Bankers Association and a coalition of Jewish organizations. The document contains the names, home cities and deposits--totaling $13.5 million--of some 500 account holders as recorded by Swiss Bank Corp.'s New York City office on June...
...would be fitting if Sapir and all the other survivors treated callously by Swiss officialdom could now look forward to receiving vast amounts in restitution. At best, smaller amounts are more likely. But, says Bronfman, "This is not about money. This is about justice." The survivors have a right, at long last, to an honest reckoning, and Switzerland needs to repair its reputation for rectitude. Both sides have a strong interest in opening the books and answering the buried questions...