Media Contact: Pat JaCoby, (858) 534-7404 
                   or Jan Jennings, (858) 822-1684

HOLOCAUST REPARATIONS NEGOTIATOR TO SHARE INSIGHTS, EXPERIENCES, AND RESULTS IN PUBLIC LECTURE APRIL 15.

EIZENSTAT TO Participate In A Panel Discussion April 16 Justice Delayed? Reparations, Remorse and Apologies Concerning World War II

In January of 1995, then U.S. ambassador to the European Union Stuart E. Eizenstat received a call at his office in Brussels from then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke with a “fateful” request:

Would Eizenstat become the State Department’s special envoy to encourage the return of property confiscated from religious communities – particularly the Jewish community – by the Nazis during and after World War II and nationalized after the war by the Communist governments of Central and Eastern Europe?  I.e., would Eizenstat tackle Holocaust reparations some 50 years after the fact?

“It was a leap into the unknown,” says Eizenstat, “but it became the most rewarding and difficult assignment of my life.”

Eizenstat will speak on Imperfect Justice: The Unfinished Business of World War II at 7:30 p.m. April 15 in the Price Center Ballroom at the University of California, San Diego.

Eizenstat also will participate in a panel discussion from 4 to 5:30 p.m. April 16 in Robinson Auditorium at UCSD’s International Relations/Pacific Studies Complex. Eizenstat will explore Justice Delayed? Reparations, Remorse and Apologies Concerning World War II with UCSD political science professor Peter Irons and Lisa Yoneyama, UCSD associate professor of Cultural Studies and Japanese Studies. Michael Schudson, professor of communication and acting provost of Thurgood Marshall College, will moderate.

Both the lecture and the panel discussion are free and open to the public.

Five years after that historic Washington, D.C. to Brussels call, Eizenstat recalls working to the last hours of the Clinton Administration helping to obtain “settlements in class action suits against private Swiss, German, Austrian, and French companies for over $8 billion in compensation. This benefited not only Jews whose suffering is beyond human understanding, but also some one million non-Jews who have received little or no compensation for over 50 years for their wartime mistreatment.”

Eizenstat says that as the result of the “intensive, direct, and unique involvement of a team of senior U.S. government officials,” religious properties are being returned; major museums are locating thousands of paintings looted by the Nazis and returning them to their owners; long dormant bank accounts are being identified, and insurance policies of Holocaust victims are being paid. Also, historical commissions have been created in 16 countries to review their roles in World War II. A 10-nation task force is promoting Holocaust education in school systems around the world.

“There is no counterpart in history for so many nations reexamining their past, making apologies, and trying to do rough justice decades later,” Eizenstat says.

Though such accomplishments are tangible and real, Eizenstat says procuring them has raised difficult questions, some of which will come up in both his lecture April 15 and in the panel discussion with professors Irons and Yoneyama April 16.

•  If, as the Bible says, the sins of the fathers should not be visited upon the sons, is it fair for later generations of Swiss, Germans, Austrians, and French to be held accountable for the actions of their predecessors?
• Has the emphasis on reparations, restitution, and monetary recoveries, diminished the memory of Holocaust victims and other victims of the Nazis?
• Has the American judicial system, with its unique class actions, been inappropriately injected into foreign policy, supplanting what should have been done through diplomatic channels?

Eizenstat adds that the efforts of his Holocaust reparations team have had a wide-ranging impact that provides further fuel for debate and discussion. As a result of the team’s successes,

Korean comfort women have pressed claims against Japan for their mistreatment during the war, and a major class action lawsuit is being prepared on behalf of African-Americans against U.S. companies for damages resulting from slavery before the Civil War.

This ripple effect of Holocaust reparations efforts has yet to be qualified and quantified, and Eizenstat points out that much work still remains toward his initial commitment.

“The Bush Administration has asked me to help implement the agreements we have reached,” Eizenstat says. “But even now we can say without fear of exaggeration that our work has honored the memory of those civilians who perished during World War II  … We have helped provide imperfect justice, but justice nevertheless, for those who still stand as witnesses to man’s gravest inhumanity toward man.”

Eizenstat’s lecture topic, Imperfect Justice: The Unfinished Business of World War II, is also the title of a book he is writing, scheduled for publication later this year.

In addition to serving as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, 1993-1996, Eizenstat was chief U.S. Government Negotiator on a number of initiatives including the Kyoto Climate Change Protocol and Swiss Bank Litigation, as well as Holocaust reparations negotiations during the Clinton Administration. He also served as Under Secretary for International Trade in the Department of Commerce, Under Secretary for Economic Affairs in the Department of State, and Deputy Secretary in the Department of the Treasury. From 1977 to 1981 he served as Chief Domestic Policy Adviser to President Jimmy Carter.

Eizenstat has been a lecturer at the Kennedy School at Harvard University and a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina and Harvard Law School. Currently he is a partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm, Covington & Burling where he heads the international practice.

Though procuring tangible Holocaust reparations, Eizenstat states in his book: “The last memory of the Holocaust and the suffering of millions of Jews and non-Jews on a scale unprecedented in recorded human history must not be of reparations, property restitution, or personal compensation, as important as these are. It should be of memory and not money.”

The Eizenstat lecture and panel discussion are sponsored by the UCSD Council of Provosts. For further information on either event call Schudson at (858) 534-4004.