Imperfect Justice

Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II

Plot

Imperfect Justice is Stuart Eizenstat's personal account of how the Holocaust became a political and diplomatic battleground fifty years after the war's end, as the issues of dormant bank accounts, slave labor, confiscated property, looted art, and unpaid insurance policies convulsed Europe and America. His story is not one of easy successes or an idyllic view of justice. Rather, it is a revealing chronicle of high-stakes negotiations involving heads of European governments, played out on an international stage in an emotionally charged atmosphere, with a subtext of crimes against humanity and billions of dollars on the table.Eizenstat recounts the often heated negotiations with the Swiss, the Germans, the French, the Austrians, and various Jewish organizations, showing how moral and legal issues shunted aside for so long, exposed wounds that had never healed and conflicts that had never been properly resolved. Each country responded in its own way: Switzerland fought the disclosures about its past and deeply resented the outside pressure it faced; Germany accepted that it was once again called upon to account for its wartime sins, this time for those committed by private industry; Austria was torn, seeing itself as both victim and collaborator with Hitler; and France courageously accepted national responsibility for the Vichy regime. And on the other side of the table were a remarkable cast of characters: class-action lawyers, some of whom were altruistic while others were as interested in their own press clippings as in serving the needs of the survivors they represented; Jewish organizations that were at each other's throats over who best represented the victims in their quest for justice; politicians with their own agendas and ambitions, including New York's colorful Senator Alfonse D'Amato, who turned the issue into his own personal crusade; and the President of the United States, Bill Clinton.