Word: swiss
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...nearing the end of their lives, in one last attempt to win restitution of what they believe is rightfully theirs, Nagel, Gabor and Schlinger have joined 12,000 Holocaust survivors in a $20 billion class action filed last October against four Swiss banks for the recovery of dormant accounts and looted property. Their suit--and the high-profile crusade by Jewish organizations, American politicians and Swiss activists--has inspired an unprecedented search through the darkest passages of 20th century history...
...Israel Singer it started with a book. In 1994 he chanced to read a Paul Erdman novel, The Swiss Account, that alluded to Allen Dulles' wartime role as America's top spy in neutral Switzerland. The hints of unsavory Swiss behavior enticed the ordained rabbi and former political science professor from New York City into reading a biography of Dulles, which made reference to a U.S. intelligence operation code-named Project Safehaven. Its mission: to track down Nazi gold and loot being smuggled out of the Third Reich...
...They can't bring those people back," he says, "but they can at least give back to my mother, in her 80s, her wealth, her history and her standing." Singer asked his boss at the World Jewish Congress in New York for permission to begin an investigation of the Swiss accounts and got the go-ahead...
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...
...down in the polls back home, under fire for his partisan assaults on President Clinton's ethics, desperate for an issue that would refurbish his image. Bronfman brought him a heaven-sent gift certain to appeal to his large bloc of Jewish voters. When Bronfman told him about the Swiss banks' stalling, D'Amato offered public hearings by his Senate banking committee. With the in-your-face D'Amato aboard, the war was about to begin in earnest...