Nazis Listed With Victims On Bank Lists Anger Greets Swiss Attempt To Deal With Wwii-Era Accounts

Hitler’s photographer. Adolf Eichmann’s aide. Names corresponding to those of ranking Nazis appear prominently on a list of World War II-era Swiss bank accounts - angering Jewish groups that banks had hoped to mollify by opening their sealed records.

The anger underscores the difficulties Swiss banks face in dealing with Holocaust sensitivities more than a half-century after the end of the Nazi era.

A spokeswoman for the Swiss Bankers Association, which published the list of 1,872 names Wednesday, said the inclusion of any Nazis merely reflects the banks’ attempt to be as open as possible, in compliance with the Jewish groups’ wishes.

“If some of those names are names of Nazi people - and we are checking that - that shows … that the banks announced everything,” said Silvia Matile.

A Holocaust research center in Israel said six names on the list appear to match those of Nazis, with some spelling discrepancies. They included Hitler’s photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, and Willy Bauer, an alias used by Eichmann’s aide, Anton Burger.

However, it was not clear whether the accounts actually belonged to known Nazis or if they were the property of other people with the same names. The Wiesenthal Center made the Nazi connections by comparing the Swiss list with its own records of Nazis, and has asked Swiss authorities for clarification.

Ironically, some of the most vocal critics of the Swiss banks’ secrecy laws were among the angriest over the new disclosure.

“Imagine the feelings of victims’ families as they read the list and see the names of victims alongside those of their murderers,” said Greville Janner, chairman of Britain’s Holocaust Education Trust, a leader in the campaign to release the names.

Some heirs to Holocaust victims were outraged over names that were not on the list - relatives they were sure owned Swiss bank accounts when they died at the hands of the Nazis.

Nevertheless, the list continued to provoke widespread interest.

Thirty-six hours after its publication, more than 2,000 people had called five regional centers in New York; Sydney, Australia; Budapest, Hungary; Basel, Switzerland; and Tel Aviv, Israel, Matile said.

The bankers association site on the World Wide Web was clogged with visitors checking out names.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, said the possible inclusion of top Nazis on the list only revealed “the cover-up of the last 50 years.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the center’s founder, sent a letter to the Swiss Bankers’ Association on Wednesday demanding “urgent help” in determining if six names on the list were indeed Nazis.

Matile said steps were being taken to make sure no ill-gotten Nazi gains would be handed over to heirs.

Backing that up is the international panel led by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is supervising the effort to turn over assets of Holocaust victims to their heirs.