Bankers
and Robbers
Jewish
solidarity is an expensive illusion, as a Jewish crook would cheat a
fellow Jew as fast as he would cheat a Goy, and probably faster. The
Swiss banks robbery gets unstuck.
“Swiss
Holocaust cash revealed to be myth”, announced the Times this
Saturday (October, 13), lowering curtain on one of the bizarre and
obnoxious dramas of extortion and robbery. It began in 1995, as two
important gentlemen, Edgar Bronfman, chairman of the World Jewish
Congress, and Abraham Burg, a rising star of Israeli politics,
visited Swiss banks on a humanitarian mission. “You have billions of
dollars deposited by the Jews before WWII, they said. - We want the
moneys repaid immediately, whilst the survivors of the Jewish
holocaust are still alive. Let them enjoy the last years of their
life in relative comfort’, they said. Bronfman and Burg were the men
banks and insurance companies wake up and listen to.
Edgar
Bronfman inherited his billions from his father Sam, a Mafia boss.
Sam made his fortune by the illegal trafficking of booze into the
US: he blended the stuff in Canada and smuggled it across the lake
through his network of gangsters during the Prohibition period. Sam
Bronfman made even more money as a loan shark. Shortly before his
death, he was asked by a journalist, what is the greatest invention
of mankind? True to form, he replied, interest on loans.
The capitals
earned by crime and squeezed from debtors could help in politics. In
Jewish politics as well, as you do not have to be elected to become
an important figure. You can always rent two rooms in an office
building and put a sign of World Jewish Association, Survivors’
Forum or Jewish Liberation Organization, and you are in the
business. There is no copyright to such titles. Bronfman’s World
Jewish Congress was exactly such a tiny body with such a grand
title. Before Bronfman, it had this or other nice Jewish fatherly
figure in the chair, such as his predecessor Nahum Goldmann, but it
pulled no strings and cut no ice. With vast capital of Bronfman, it
became a power structure.
Avrum
(Abraham) Burg, the speaker of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) and
a candidate to the leadership of Israeli Labour, was the son of an
important Israeli politician, a leader of the National Religious
Party, Dr Burg, who served all governments of Israel as a Minister
for 40 years until his demise. Avrum provided a good sound-byte on
ABC Nightline on 2.8.01, when he described Palestinians as ‘people
you do not want your daughter to get married to’. Avrum needed a
sponsor to get forward in politics, while Bronfman needed a reliable
Israeli partner for his plan.
No bank or
insurance company could refuse such important gentlemen. After short
resistance, the Swiss gnomes gave in, and the titular heads of Jews
walked away with large pot of cash. ‘These Jews want to rob our
banks and insurance companies in the name of their holocaust’, the
Swiss probably fumigated. But they were mistaken.
While this
story began as Elders of Zion Revisited, its continuation followed
the script of the Sting. Six years passed by, but almost no money
left the benevolent grasp of international commissions created by
Bronfman and Burg. Practically nothing was given to the survivors of
the Jewish holocaust. The moneys were misappropriated by the same
people that demanded justice for the victims.
Recently the
authoritative LA Times [i] stated: “An international commission
created to resolve Holocaust-era insurance disputes has reportedly
spent more than $30 million on salaries, hotel bills and newspaper
ads while distributing only $3 million to claimants”. The members of
the commission turned it into a high class travel agency and
entertainment spot, LA Times wrote: ‘The documents show that since
1998 the commission has held at least 18 meetings with up to 100
participants at hotels in London, Jerusalem, Rome, Washington and
New York’. As to the slave labour settlement, The Independent [ii]
reported, ‘while the victims of the Holocaust will receive (maybe)
between USD 2,500 and USD 7,500, the <Jewish> lawyers who
negotiated the settlement will collect fees well in excess of 1 m
each’.
Now, the
Times reported that Swiss banks checked the dormant accounts and
found that they did not even belong to the Jewish victims of
Holocaust. They belonged mainly to ‘wealthy non-Jewish people who
forgot about their money’. The Swiss haven’t not paid $1.5 b to
Bronfman and Burg, because they became convinced in their claims.
They paid because they had no choice, Bronfman (together with Mark
Rich) was an important supporter of President Bill Clinton, and
Clinton would do his asking, probably stopping just short of bombing
Switzerland.
Some parts
of the story began to surface in CUNY Professor Norman Finkelstein’s
best-selling book, Holocaust Industry and caused major controversy.
Finkelstein objected to the extortionist methods of the Jewish
organisations. They presented him as a liar and an anti-Semite. Now,
a year after his book was published, more unexpected and juicy
details of sordid dealing begin to leak. If the data will be
confirmed, we are looking into the greatest robbery ever perpetuated
in the 20th century.
Apparently, Professor Finkelstein got some
things wrong: to the chagrin of the Jew-haters, the victims of the
robbery were not only the banks and insurance companies, but
ordinary folk of Jewish origin. To the embarrassment of the
Jew-lovers, the robbers were the self-appointed Jewish leaders who
claimed to represent the Jewish people.
II
The
man behind this discovery is very different from the New York
Professor Finkelstein. Martin Stern is a wealthy British
businessman, deeply involved with real estate, Jewish and Zionist
causes. He works in London and spends his weekends in his spacious
apartment in Jerusalem’s Orthodox neighbourhood. He does not miss a
single prayer in his shul, gives to charities and loves Israel.
His casual
meeting with a Swiss banker in Villar, a prestigious resort in the
Swiss Alps, started the machinery of holocaust claims. The banker
told Stern an interesting small tale. His bank, Union Swisse (USB),
computerised its business in 1987 and discovered many accounts
dormant since 1939. The bank managers came to conclusion that some
SF 45 million (30 m USD) of deposits probably belonged to the Jews
who had died during or after the war.
‘We did not
want to keep somebody’s else money’, - said the honest Swiss banker,
- we called the World Jewish Congress and asked them to help and
find the heirs to the funds. The Congress replied: “It is not on our
agenda”. Cold-shouldered Swiss transferred the $30 million to the
Red Cross.
Martin Stern
was touched by the story and told it to Israeli Radio. Two weeks
after the broadcast, ‘coincidentally’ Bronfman and Burg knocked on
the doors of the Swiss Banking Corporation demanding the cash. As we
have stated above, they got the money but kept it for their
purposes. Martin Stern felt he was involved and he followed the
story in its development.
He became
increasingly worried with the way the Holocaust money was handled.
Beside their own salaries, the Claims conference spent USD 43 m for
the food parcels for Russian Jews. This subject Bronfman and Burg
did not mention when they went to the Swiss banks and asked to speed
up the payment to survivors, to people who owned the money. Had
their agenda changed?
Family
circumstances led Stern to a connected story of the Generali
Insurance. Before the WWII, the Generali was a big Italian insurance
business, owned by Italian Jews. ‘Many insurance companies before
the WWII were in the Jewish hands, as in those days insurance was a
small man’s bank’, Stern explains. The Generali had big assets in
Palestine, as well as in Balkans and Italy. Despite the war, Italian
fascism and Holocaust, the Generali retained its Jewish connection.
They did not want to follow the example of Swiss and Germans and
denied all knowledge of the pre-war policies. Stern investigated at
his own expense and succeeded to locate the secret storage where the
bosses of the Generali kept the pre-war policies. He found out that
the Generali owes huge sums to heirs of their insured. His discovery
forced the Generali Assurance to mend their ways and agree to pay,
wishing to make amends to their policy holders personally.
III
Now,
if the deceased wouldn’t be Jews, their heirs would get the value of
their policies from the relevant insurance company or a bank. But,
as you have been suspected all along, we Jews are different. We are
different because we are more naive than somewhat. That is why we
agreed to have an intermediary – the Jewish leaders - to deal with
the (largely Gentile) World.
From 1950s
on, Jewish leaders made a fortune as the intermediary, as the
compensation did not go straight to the heirs and survivors, but
went to the sticky hands of the leaders. The Israeli Jews were
supposed to receive the compensation and pension via Israeli
channels, while European Jews received their money straight from the
Goyiim. Astonishingly, the survivors who were paid via Jewish hands,
always got less, sometimes much less. The Jewish state, Jewish banks
and Jewish organisations earned on every transaction, and they did
not miss a single trick. When Israel ran high inflation, the
pensions of the survivors were always under-indexed. Banks did not
transmit the funds on time.
When the
Russian Jews arrived to Israel, the Jewish leaders reached an
agreement with Germany to provide for the survivors. A lion share of
the funds given by Germans remained in the hands of the Jewish
organisations, intermediaries and other dealers.
Whoever
relied upon our Jewish brothers was screwed up, as robbing
fellow-Jews is a favourite pastime of Jewish crooks, leaders and
bankers. A cynical man would say: the very idea of the Jewish People
is the best invention of crooks. In the days of our grandfathers, it
was not working all that well, as the Jews knew: a Jewish crook
would cheat a fellow Jew as fast as he would cheat a Goy, and
probably faster. But now we forgot this important notion.
IV
After
Martin Stern found the policies, the Generali Insurance agreed to
cooperate and pay. But the Israeli and Jewish politicians wanted to
remain in the play. They negotiated a fixed settlement with the
Generali on behalf of the Jewish policy holders. It was a crazy
idea: whether the Jews are a religious or an ethnic group, surely
they insured their lives as private persons. Moreover, they did not
empower Israeli politicians to represent them. But the politicians
negotiated the settlement, received one hundred million dollar,
called it The Generali Fund, and began to use it as their own. They
forgot the interest of Jewish policy holders, or, probably, they
never considered it but a figure of speech.
In June ’01,
out of 1250 policy information requests, the Generali Fund treated
only 72. The policy holders were sent there and back, often refused
for no reason or received no reply at all. In despair, they turned
to Italians, and they promptly paid. It was an additional proof that
we Jews need Jewish intermediaries as much as fish needs a diving
suit. In the same time, the Fund trustees made 270 ‘ex gratia
humanitarian payments’. They sent food parcels to the Russian Jews,
in order to attract them to Israel. I am sure the Generali insurance
would be very happy to feed the Russian Jews and to increase their
Zionist zeal, but why the Israeli politicians did not say so while
negotiating the settlement?
Martin Stern
discovered that trustees of the GF became frequent fliers to Italy
on the expense of the Fund, and when it appeared as too small money,
they did not hesitate to ask the Generali for substantial fees. The
problem crossed the ocean, and the American claimants discovered
that their claims were ‘settled’ by the politicians. American Jewish
organisations supported their Israeli buddies. An important player
in the system was Lawrence Eagleburger, a former U.S. Secretary of
state. This great man chairs the commission of Jewish leaders for
dealing with Holocaust related insurance claims and draws a $350,000
annual salary. In Stern’s opinion, the insurance settlement money
would barely suffice to pay the policy holders. That is why he is
horrified by ease Messrs Bronfman and Burg waste the funds on other
worthy things.
V
While
the Jewish organisations gave hard time to the Swiss and the German
banks, they became much more timid when they came across a Jewish
bank. Bank Leumi of Israel has probably more funds of the perished
Jews than any Swiss or German bank. You will laugh, but Israeli
bankers are not in a rush to return the money. As a matter of fact,
they stick to the cash like glue. Before the WWII, many European
Jews deposited their savings in the Anglo-Palestine Bank, the main
Jewish bank of British Palestine, as Bank Leumi was called before
1948. Some of them made deposits, others rented safe boxes. Not only
Jews used the bank - its cellars stored vast fortunes of Palestinian
Christians and Muslims as well.
Many Palestinians lost their
deposits in the great upheaval of 1948. Israeli banks used all ways
to block their moneys and let them disappear as the inflation
soared. But the Jews did not fare better. Apparently, the worst
place where a Jew could leave his money for safe keeping was Bank
Leumi, the National Bank of Israel. The Holocaust survivors and
heirs of victims were met with adamant refusal of Bank Leumi to open
up its documentation for inspection.
In course of
privatisation, Bank Leumi became partly owned by the Generali
Assurance. Migdal Insurance, Generali and Bank Leumi constitute an
intertwined group of businesses and businessmen with dubious record.
Same men sit on the board of the companies, sharing perks and
shifting around funds.
Martin Stern
discovered that in 1950s, Bank Leumi staff opened, without external
control and supervision, even without writing a protocol, all
dormant safe boxes. Their contents were pushed into brown envelopes
and stored hidden from the public eye. As a colourful detail, he was
told of a trunk that stood in the offices of Bank Leumi for years,
to the chagrin of typists who tore their stockings at its corners.
When the trunk was opened, they found there a real treasure,
apparently placed for safekeeping by a Coptic church. Until now, the
trunk has not been returned to the Church.
Marin Stern
could not believe such flagrant breach of banking laws was possible.
In the course of his struggle for the interests of Holocaust
survivors and their heirs, he demanded from the Bank Leumi officials
to publish the names of the safe box owners, whose deposits were
removed by the bank. At first, the Director General of the Bank,
Galia Maor, denied the bank opened the boxes. When presented with
evidence, she replied sternly, ‘we found only love letters’. I
wonder whether such reply, if given by the Swiss, would be
acceptable for the Jewish organisations.
The fate of
currency deposits was not different from the safe boxes, as the Bank
Leumi could win both ways. A Mrs Klausner deposited before the WWII
in Bank Leumi 170 pounds sterling, an equivalent of USD 25,000 in
today’s value. When she came to claim her deposit, Bank Leumi
offered her NIS 13, or USD 4. In order to avoid future
embarrassment, the bank officials began to destroy old
documentation.
The tricks of Bank Leumi attracted attention of
the Israeli press and the Knesset (Parliament), and a parliamentary
commission of enquiry was called for. It took six months of
intensive negotiations to form the commission, but in its charter
there was one conspicuous fault. The survivors demanded to find out
the persons responsible for hiding their funds for half a century.
This demand was not included in the chapter. Even worse, the
commission includes persons responsible for the present state of
things. Zvi Barak was a member of Bank Leumi management, he also
sits in the management of Generali Fund, he was sent to investigate
the Swiss banks and now he is supposed to find out the culprits in
his own bank.
Michael
Kleiner is a right wing MP of Herut party. He wrote to the
parliamentary commission of enquiry, ‘the Bank destroys documents in
two different sections, and now there is deep suspicion regarding
the Holocaust deposits and especially the brown envelopes of the
safe boxes’.
Recently
Bank Leumi became known for large scale cash laundering, when the
fortunes stolen by Vladimir Montesinos and his boss Alberto
Fujimori, an ex-president of Peru, were traced to the Bank Leumi’s
office in Switzerland. One can’t understand the word ‘laundering’ in
reference to such a bank, as probably it would make a handkerchief
dirty if laundered.
VI
The
biggest achievement of the Jewish leaders was recorded in Germany,
in 1991, as East Germany joined the German Federal Republic. After
1945, the Socialist East Germany did not return property to German
pre-war owners, whether Gentiles or Jews. Theirs was a good logic.
East Germans did not subscribe to the notion of the ‘Jewish people’.
They dealt on equal footing with the German citizens, Jews or not.
They thought that the Nazi idea of Jewish separateness was laid to
rest in 1945. They were wrong. West Germany accepted the feudal
concept of Jewry in 1950, when it paid compensation for the Jewish
property – not to survivors or their heirs, but to the state of
Israel and the Jewish leaders elsewhere. West Germans did it again
in 1991.
For
instance, two Germans, Moses and Peter, perished in the war, and
left some property in East Germany. Property of Peter the Gentile
remained in the hands of the German government, until his heir was
found. If he would have no heirs, the property would remain in the
hands of German people. But property of Moses the Jew would pass
into the hands of Messrs Bronfman & Burg as the leaders and
representatives of the Jewish People, members of the Conference for
Claims. Germans transferred the property that belonged to their
Jewish citizens on the territory of the East Germany into the hands
of the Conference.
The
Conference was a fictitious body of 44 men representing nobody. Some
of them were sent, for instance, by a grandly named Anglo-Jewish
Association, whose total membership is about 50. Only two persons
‘represent’ millions of Israeli Jews. This Conference was supposed
to find rightful heirs of Moses, and other Germans of Jewish origin.
However, the Jewish leaders had a better idea. They knew that
many owners would never come to claim their houses anyway, and the
property will be theirs. But it was not enough for the greedy
bastards. They put a certain date after which they would not
consider the claims of heirs. That was a strike worthy of Jewish
genius: some thirty billion dollars worth of property became theirs
as if by right. From now on, they could take easy the claims of
rightful heirs. And the billions dollars of rent would accumulate on
their accounts.
American
Jewish survivors’ organisations began their fight against the Jewish
leaders. They demand from the Conference to make public full lists
of their assets, to find real heirs and to give up the assets. They
think of suing Germany, Italy and other countries and organisations
that for some mysterious reason subscribed to the medieval idea of
‘Jewish property’. They say, property could be of individual Jews
only, not some odd ‘Jewish property’. As this story proved, such
ideas are good for the self-proclaimed Jewish leaders to keep them
in the style they are accustomed to, but for ordinary folks of
Jewish origin it is the right time to give up the expensive
illusions of Jewish solidarity.
[i]
Click here
[ii] Independent, 18.06.01, by Mary Dejevsky from
Washington