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Metro Detroit's Jewish
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Elan Village's monthly rate includes:
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24 hour Personal Care Assistance
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JANET ANTIN (248) 386-0303
26051 Lahser Road • Southfield, Michigan 48034
Elan Village provides
Care that Changes with You
Preferred Provider of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit
Call Alicia R. Nelson
(248) 557-0109
for appointment
or: www.allthingsjewish.com
a
t
ti
CENTER
A nursing
home with
a heart
eTY
12/10
1999
32
26900 Franklin Road
Southfield, MI 48034
(248) 350-8070
Lakeland is very clean and
attractive. The staff are friendly
and attentive, and my mother
gets a lot of loving care."
— JERRY PASKOVITZ, Farmington Hills
• Clean and tranquil environment
• Restorative nursing program
• Hospice and respite care available
• Convenient Southfield location
• Reasonable rates
• Medicare-certified
For more information or to arrange a
visit, call our Admissions Department.
from page 30
accounts described in the panel's report
far exceeds initial estimates presented
by the Swiss banks: In testimony three
years ago before a U.S. congressional
panel, Swiss Bankers Association repre-
sentatives said they could only locate
775 accounts worth about $32 million.
The panel found no reason to
revise the $1.25 billion settlement that
Swiss banks agreed to last year to pay
Holocaust-era claims. This provided
some relief for Swiss bankers, who had
feared that the commission's findings
could jeopardize the settlement, which
was meant to put an end to what has
arguably been the darkest chapter in
modern Swiss history.
Holocaust victims or their heirs
with valid claims to the dormant
accounts will be the first to receive
moneys from that settlement. Had the
commission estimated that their
claims would exceed the $1.25 billion,
all bets might have been off.
At the end of its three-year, $300-mil-
lion inquiry into the records of 59 banks,
the Volcker panel painted a mixed pic-
ture. On the one hand it found "no evi-
dence of systematic destruction" of
records but did confirm "evidence of
questionable and deceitful actions by
some individual banks" in handling the
accounts of Holocaust victims.
The report recommended waiving
Swiss banking secrecy laws to publish
the names of 25,187 dormant
accounts, but said information about
the 29,000 other accounts was too
skimpy to merit their publication.
In 1997, two separate lists were
published that included some 16,000
names linked to dormant accounts
worth about $54.4 million.
Swiss bankers, not surprisingly,
were pleased that the commission
found no proof that they had system-
atically destroyed records.
Georg Krayer, president of the
Swiss Bankers Association, apologized
Monday "for all the disappointments
and hurt feelings" caused by the
banks' "insufficient" knowledge about
the sufferings of Holocaust victims
before the controversy erupted four
years ago. But at the same time, he
said, "with the exception of a few iso-
lated cases, the banks' conduct during
the period in question was correct."
Jewish leaders, however, had a dif-
ferent view of the panel's findings.
"It is a devastating report," said
Elan Steinberg, executive director of
the WJC "It confirms the fears of
Holocaust survivors and validates their
testimony of 50 years, and it is replete
with examples of misconduct on the
part of the banks." it
SLAVE LABOR
from page 30
The settlement negotiations have
brought together representatives of
Holocaust survivors, the German,
U.S. and Eastern European govern-
ments, and some 50 German compa-
nies.
At the last round of talks last
month, the German side made what
it described as its "final offer"
about $4.1 billion at current
exchange rates. At that time, lawyers
for the survivors climbed down sig-
nificantly from their earlier demand
for $28 billion.
Those talks ended with Gideon
Taylor, executive director of the
Conference on Jewish Material Claims
Against Germany, which is among the
groups negotiating on behalf of the
laborers, speaking optimistically that
the "gaps had narrowed."
Otto Lambsdorff, who represents
the German government in the settle-
ment negotiations, said Tuesday it is
urgent that the U.S. government come
to a decision on the latest German
offer, which he described as the best
that would come from the German
side.
The list that the AJCommittee
released Tuesday may lead some nego-
tiators to claim that the German side
should increase its offer.
The spokesman for German indus-
try, Wolfgang Gibowski, told JTA
after last month's round of talks that
"there are too few companies partici-
pating" in the fund for there to be an
increase in the offer.
On Mondiy, he said, there were 17
firms on the letterhead of the fund,
called "Remembrance, Responsibility
and the Future."
"Another 45 want to join, but not
publicly," said Gibowski. "We are still
in negotiations with a lot of those
firms" regarding the amount of their
contribution.
He said "nobody knows" how many
firms actually used slave laborers. "It
might be 2,000 or 3,000."
Deidre Berger, associate director of
the AJCommittee in Berlin, said she
hoped that even if there is a settle-
ment, other firms would join in.
The new list compiled by histori-
ans working with the AJCommittee
will be released on the organization's
Web site, www.ajc.org In another
development, a German manufactur-
er of saws, Andreas Stihl, announced
Tuesday its decision to join the
industry fund. The firm reportedly
used about 40 foreign workers per
year between 1939 and 1943. It
remains unknown how many were
slave laborers. LI