An Imperfect Justice
by Swanee Hunt, Scripps Howard News Service
April 30, 2024

Stuart Eizenstat is an intense man, with a disarming Georgia accent cushioning his keen, driving intellect. He has been a friend ever since we both served as ambassadors during the Clinton administration. While representing the United States to the European Union, Eizenstat agreed to a State Department request to untangle the rightful ownership of properties confiscated by Nazis during World War II.

But an article in the Wall Street Journal opened his eyes to an even greater theft: Swiss banks silently confiscating monies deposited for safekeeping by Jews terrified of the Nazi menace. Outraged at the moral and legal arrogance of the German allies, Eizenstat plunged headlong into the diplomatic battleground of Holocaust reparations.

His six-year odyssey to secure a thread of justice for war victims is a tale of international intrigue, cover-ups and expose. In his new book, "Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II," Eizenstat tells of heated negotiations fueled by festering emotional wounds and unresolved political disputes. In all, Hitler's master plan to destroy European Jewry left unclaimed billions in Swiss banks, in addition to property, art and jewels confiscated by Nazi allies.

The story of Holocaust survivor Roman Kent is illustrative. He describes how, as a young boy, he watched his father - and thousands of "walking skeletons" - die in the Warsaw ghetto. His mother and sister were gassed to death. Liberated by U.S. troops, Kent immigrated to Atlanta, Eizenstat's hometown. Years later, as a successful businessman, he learned that most Holocaust survivors were destitute. Finding the power denied him as a child slave, Kent was working privately with a non-governmental organization on a parallel path to Eizenstat, seeking reparations for survivors. Eizenstat's dogged diplomacy was essential to Kent's effort.

Negotiations with numerous European governments were marked by "difficult, confrontational clashes over billions of dollars, wounded national pride, and efforts at belated justice, involving cataclysmic events that had taken place more than fifty years before." Those required to pay had played no direct part in the horrific crimes; but their forefathers, political ancestors, and industrial markets had profited handsomely. At which point did it become unjust for succeeding generations to pay for their fathers' sins? As Eizenstat wrestled with that conundrum, countries weighed the financial cost of reparations versus the political damage of denial.

In the end, Eizenstat prevailed in winning what he calls "rough justice." He was instrumental in securing settlements totaling $8 billion for the victims; helping museums recover looted art; arranging payments to owners of insurance policies; and restoring dormant bank accounts to their rightful heirs. The cases may have stood on shaky legal ground, but they were won in the court of public opinion.

When in 1999 President Johannes Rau publicly "begged forgiveness" for Germany's wartime atrocities, Roman Kent cried out, "This is what we wanted to hear!" Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel says, "It is not really about money. In a deeper sense, it is about something infinitely more important and more meaningful; it is about the ethical value and weight of memory." Eizenstat admits there can be no true accounting for the devastation wrought by the Nazis. He writes, "the most lasting legacy of the effort I led was simply the emergence of the truth - truth about the dimensions of the massive theft of property, the methods used by the Nazis to sustain their war effort with looted gold and millions of coerced laborers..." That gold came partly from Holocaust victim's dental work, wedding bands and watches.

On a personal note, Eizenstat discovered he was a victim, too: three of his grandfather's sisters died in the Holocaust. That revelation entwining him even more tightly to the pain of loss and remembrance that is at the core of the work of others like Roman Kent and Elie Wiesel. Stuart Eizenstat is a quiet hero, a moral soul who responds to injustice by trying to rectify it. His efforts have laid the groundwork for reparations cases worldwide.

As Arabs and Kurds struggle over property in Iraq, and Israelis and Palestinians wrangle over land rights, Eizenstat's work may offer a blueprint. Compensation, in the form of an international donor fund, may help former victims in the here and now, although we must also find ways to memorialize the suffering of the past. For survivors, an imperfect justice is better than no justice.

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