TESTIMONY OF JACK RUBIN

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

SUBCOMMITTEE FOR EUROPE

OCTOBER 3, 2007

My name is Jack Rubin, and I live in Boynton Beach, Florida. I want to thank Chairman Wexler, my Congressman, for holding this important hearing and for inviting Holocaust survivors to speak for ourselves about these issues of great concern. I am here to urge you in the most urgent terms possible to pass HR 1746, the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2007.

I was born in 1928 in Vari, Czechoslovakia, which was annexed by Hungary in 1938. We lived in a building where my father’s general store was also located. There was a sign that said the building and premises were insured by “Generali Moldavia.” I am certain that my father, who was a careful business man, had all kinds of insurance, including life insurance, because he spoke about it often. From these conversations, I even remember the name of the agent, Mr. Joseph Schwartz.

Like all Jews in our town, we were forced out of our home in April of 1944 with only the clothes on our back and one suitcase each, and taken to the Beregsastz Ghetto. There the Nazis forced everyone to turn over their jewelry, watches, wedding rings, and hand over everything of value. We were then deported to Auschwitz, where my parents perished. I survived Auschwitz and three other camps. Needless to say, after the Holocaust, I had no way to find any papers such as insurance policies.

After ICHEIC was created, I applied because of the publicity encouraging applications. They promised to open company records and apply “relaxed standards of proof.” I filed two claims, naming my father Ferencz Rubin and my mother Rosa Rosenbaum-Rubin, and their birth years. I mentioned the sign on our building for “Generali Moldavia,” and the fact that the agent Mr. Schwartz was our agent, who also died in the Holocaust. This was all the information I had, but considering the circumstances it was certainly enough to show we had insurance.

Four years later I received a letter from Generali stating that they had no records from their subsidiaries and no records of policies in the family. This is absurd, because I know we had insurance. Yet Generali did not produce one piece of paper to justify its decision, and the ICHEIC Arbitrator did not require the company to produce any proof. He did not force them to produce records from Generali Moldavia, a known subsidiary, and he did not require them to produce information about Mr. Schwartz, the agent from our town. He just accepted Generali’s word.

Survivors are appalled by the treatment we have received from ICHEIC and other institutions. ICHEIC was controlled by the insurance companies and conducted in secret. Once again, we survivors were denied access to the truth. Stealing our money is bad enough, but concealing the truth from Holocaust survivors is a terrible thing. If our society today has any decency, it would require the companies to open their records and be fully accountable for their thefts of our families’ legacies. After all, isn’t this why people buy insurance? The companies betrayed us and to date, the U.S. justice system has blocked our access to the truth. I am here today to ask you to fix this by passing HR 1746, because it will require the companies to open their records, and allow survivors and heirs to go to court for the truth.

I would also be able to tell you about horror stories facing elderly, poor survivors today in my community, and throughout the United States. And the funds are not getting to those who were looted and those who need the help. The ICHEIC money we talked about. Also, in the Swiss bank case, Judge Korman allocated 75% of the Looted Assets funds to the Former Soviet Union, with only 4% for the needs of survivors in the United States, is an insult to those of us who went through the Holocaust, denying assistance to Americans just because he believes the rich here should take care of the survivors here. This is the survivors’ money, but the poor here do not have a fair chance to benefit from the settlement.

Also, the Claims Conference is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars. Survivors do not believe there has been an adequate accounting of the property obtained from Germany and the uses of those funds. We deserve a full accounting, because survivors are suffering.

Finally, let’s not forget that Germany bears primary responsibility for the rights and needs of Holocaust survivors. We call upon Congress to raise with the Administration and the German Government the fact that thousands of survivors today are not living with the dignity to which they are entitled. SS officers receive more from Germany in pensions than Holocaust survivors. We need immediate solutions, no matter what the source.

I hope you will do a complete audit of where the survivors’ money has gone, because we know it isn’t coming to those who were looted, or those in need.

There is a common theme in the restitution area. There has been secrecy, and the deals have been made by people we did not appoint or approve. We have been denied the truth, and that is outrageous. We survivors, who are the most affected, were not allowed to participate and the results are terrible. They are totally inadequate. We need Congress to expose these deals and demand, as a matter of morality, a just outcome. The time for talk is over.

I have submitted a few news articles on these subjects, which I hope you will allow for the record.

Thank you very much.