Swiss Debt More Than Monetary
Before the Nazis shot him, my grandfather, Jacob Glass, was one of Poland’s richest men. He made his fortune in private banking and he sent much of it off to New York, London and Geneva.
But as war clouds massed over Europe in 1939, he brought it all back to Warsaw. Poland had made it illegal to hold funds abroad; grandfather was a law-abiding citizen.
Others acted differently, hiding their money via Swiss agents in sealed accounts. After the Germans had annihilated them, their treasure troves vanished into the bowels of the Swiss banks.
More than a half-century since those foul events occurred, the scandal has surfaced. It hung over this lovely mountain resort as it played host to many of the world’s leading figures - gathered here to pontificate on what awaits the planet. The visiting Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told Swiss President Arnold Koller that justice must be done.
What sort of justice? In Poland alone, 3.1 million Jews fell in the Holocaust. Perhaps another 100,000, including me, lived. But the last of survivors are now getting on in years.
“What can the World Jewish Congress accomplish at this point?” a Geneva-based banker for the Rothschild family asked me. “This will only turn the (Swiss) people against the Jews.”
They didn’t have that far to turn during World War II. “Our Army was a bad joke,” the Rothschild man noted. “The Germans could have gotten us too. But Hitler wanted a safe place to stash the Jewish gold.”
To Davos, where the world’s elite came in 1997 to schmooze, David Frankfurter, a Swiss Jew, came in 1936 to kill Wilhelm Gustloff, the Swiss Nazi boss.
Switzerland’s Nazis had set up shop in Davos because many Germans lived in the area and because Gustloff savored the exhilarating mountain air.
Frankfurter served 10 years for the murder.
Now that the records of other crimes have been partly unsealed, an “Independent Committee of Eminent Persons” will look into the whole stinking mess.
Former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker, who will head the panel, said only 26 of some 500 Swiss banks have so far responded to the search for looted assets. Volcker thinks there may be a lot more victims’ money to be accounted for than has so far come to light.
In dealing with their problem, the Swiss want it both ways.
Daniel Zuberbuehler, the Swiss Banking Commission honcho, said Volcker’s audit team will have full access to bank records relating to the wartime heist. However, citing draconian bank secrecy laws, Zuberbuehler also said that the auditors will be barred from disclosing their findings to outside parties, including Volcker’s committee.
Some say a deal in the making - which includes a trust fund to be used as a down payment - will bring a sense of closure both to the outraged Jewish groups, who seek restitution, and to the Swiss, who have long stonewalled them.
But I say that I’m lucky to be alive amid these breathtaking Alpine vistas. On becoming U.S. citizens in 1948, we didn’t have a penny to our names. Now I’m content not to be owed one bloody Swiss franc.
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