| WASHINGTON,
D.C. – During a Congressional hearing today, U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky
(D-IL) said that Congress must pass legislation to force insurance companies
to pay Holocaust survivors their rightful claims. The hearing was held
in the Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Intergovernmental
Relations, and Financial Management, of which Schakowsky is the top Democrat,
to consider H.R 2693, the Holocaust Victims Insurance Relief Act. U.S.
Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), Ranking Democrat on the Full Government
Reform Committee, is the chief sponsor of the legislation.
“With
the assistance of major insurance companies, some of which operate in the
United States today, the Nazi regime took over and liquidated policies
held by Jews that were killed, sent to concentration camps, and forced
into slave labor,” said Schakowsky, whose Congressional District includes
Skokie, home to one of the largest concentrations of survivors in the country.
Schakowsky
expressed the frustration of her constituents who have been denied access
to valuable information from insurance companies.
“Besides
the reprehensible foot dragging and refusal to accept responsibility for
the shameful actions of their executives or their government during the
Nazi era, Holocaust era policy writers have to date not provided victims
or heirs access to lists of those policies they wrote during that time
period. I have had scores of constituents contact me with questions, dismayed
that the process has gone on for so long and they are still without answers
or justice,” Schakowsky said.
H.R.
2693 would require disclosure to the U.S. Department of Commerce critical
information, including names and places of birth listed on all life, dowry,
education and property insurance, about policies that were in effect in
all regions under Nazi control between 1933 and 1945. In addition
the bill requires the disclosure of the name of the company that issued
the policy and the name of the company responsible for those policies today.
The information would be made public through a registry operated by the
National Archives. Another important provision of the bill is the
enforcement mechanism: $5,000 a day for noncompliance.
“Congress
must send a loud, clear and long overdue message to companies that do business
in the United States. Unless they agree to stop their dilatory and
evasive tactics, own up to their shameful past, and provide needed information
to the public, they should not expect to reap the large profits they have
come to enjoy from their customers in this country. HR 2693
would accomplish the goal of convincing insurance companies with unmet
obligations to Holocaust survivors that they are better off cooperating,”
Schakowsky concluded. |
