An unspeakable financial atrocity defying the last vestiges of all reason even in the era of Bernie Madoff was revealed Tuesday, November 9.
The victim?
None other than the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which issues payments to Jewish Holocaust victims.
And the perpetrators of this heinous scheme? Seventeen individuals including six current and former staff members of the Claims Conference who were arrested for defrauding the organization of $42.5 million. Yes, you read correctly: $42.5 million.
The scheme, discovered late last year, involved creating and submitting fraudulent documents attesting to eligibility for Holocaust-related compensation payments. Read the related news coverage
When the Madoff scandal erupted, Jews everywhere shook their heads in disbelief. Yeshiva University. Brandeis University. Hadassah. Federations. Individual investors. The Jewish world is still struggling toward recovery.
The Claims Conference says that no Holocaust victims were deprived of money just the organization itself. But falsifying documents Holocaust documents for money? Its an insult too awful to comprehend. One specific fund was attacked: the Hardship Fund, established by the German government to make one-time payments of $3,600 to Jewish Holocaust survivors who emigrated from Soviet bloc countries. It was one more sign of the good will of contemporary Germany, this time responding to a situation that could not be forseen when the principle of reparations was established: freedom from the Soviet bloc, access to a different group of survivors.
The theft from that fund is more than biting the hand that feeds these noble remnants of a nightmare. It borders on amputation.
According to Haaretz, the Claims Conference announced in July that 202 pensions had been suspended, totalling $7 million. An additional 456 pensions are now thought to be fraudulent, upping the figure to $24.5 million. Tack on 4,957 fraudulent one-time Hardship Fund payments and the butchers bill comes to $42.5 million.
The FBI arrested the 17 individuals, who now stand charged by the US Attorneys Office. But what of their punishment? In this case, justice demands the most severe punishment allowed by law. Anything short of that would be an egregious insult to Holocaust survivors and the Claims Conference that protects them.
In a perversely ironic way, the punishment will mirror the insoluble dilemma of the Holocaust itself: There is no punishment that could ever fit the crime.
Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News
