Long wait continues for Holocaust claims

Jace Radke

Monday, May 6, 2002 | 9:27 a.m.

Information

For more information on claims, call (800) 957-3203 or (702) 732-0304. Applications can be found online at www.icheic.org.

Harold Blitzer remembers his family's poultry shop in Berlin before World War II and how it was destroyed during Kristallnacht, "The night of broken glass."

More than 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed in Germany and Nazi-occupied territories Nov. 9 and 10, 1938.

The International Commission on Holocaust Era Claims was established in 1998 by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners with several European insurance companies and regulators and the state of Israel to try to compensate those who lost property to the Nazis or their allies.

But progress has been slow, as a meeting on the progress of claims Sunday illustrated. Like many Holocaust survivors, Blitzer is still waiting for his insurance claims to be paid.

"I submitted a claim four years ago, and I have heard nothing," Blitzer said at a meeting of the Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada at Congregation Ner Tamid. "They know that we're not getting any younger, and soon there won't be anyone left to make claims."

The process of paying out claims has become bogged down in politics and bureaucracy, said Nevada Insurance Commissioner Alice Molasky-Arman, who attended the meeting to update Holocaust survivors.

"It has been dragged out for far too long, but none of us knows when it will be finished," Molasky-Arman told about 50 people. "I wish I had the answers people want to hear."

Molasky-Arman said that she and other insurance commissioners from states such as New York, Florida, California and Illinois are pushing the Commission on Holocaust Era Claims to move through the claims faster.

In Nevada 92 claims have been submitted and only one has been resolved, Molasky-Arman said.

Henry Schuster, who is president of the Southern Nevada Survivors Group, which has a membership of more than 200, said that those who have filed claims are angry that they have not yet been processed.

"These people are in their 70s and 80s and they're not going to be around forever to file claims," Schuster said. "Some of the problem is bureaucracy, but some is that they just want to keep the money."

Because of the delays with the process the deadline to have the claims to the commission has been extended from Feb. 1 to Sept. 30 of this year, Molasky-Arman said.