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

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.

Eizenstat held various positions in the Clinton administration but none of them was more important than his role as seeker of justice for Holocaust victims. For 50 years a number of European governments and big business had expressed outrage at Nazi atrocities while ignoring their own involvement. Many politicians, bankers and industrialists had profited from Hitler's murderous regime, both during the war and in its aftermath. Not until Eizenstat came along were they called to account and forced (screaming, in most cases) to pay restitution. In his quest for justice, Eizenstat tracked down looted treasures, he discovered how assets had first been seized then concealed and brazenly 'recycled' to appear as something other than they were - often by those who in public were among the most outspoken critics of Hitler's 'final solution'. Eizenstat's involvement in the quest for justice began in 1995 when he received a phone call from President Clinton's office. He was to put his considerable detective skills to use in unearthing the extent of commercial involvement in the Holocaust. His goal was to find looted goods and return them to their rightful owners, or alternatively to see that adequate compensation was paid. The operation was to take him six years and he succeeded beyond all expectations. In telling his story, Eizenstat is modest about his part in the mission. He had an army of helpers and advisers but many of them were working to their own agendas, not always altruistic. Some legal types were out only for publicity, others sought to make political capital, while various Jewish groups squabbled about which of them best represented Holocaust victims. Eizenstat therefore had to contend with problems in his own camp as well as the enemies outside who sought to undermine him. In particular he met obstacles at every turn in the supposedly neutral land of Switzerland. The tale is a salutary one of shameful collaboration, greed and prejudice beyond imagination. But Eizenstat writes without rancour. He emerges as a decent man who sought only justice for those without an adequate voice of their own. His book shows that the Holocaust and its effects had much farther-reaching effects than many in Europe would like to acknowledge. (Kirkus UK)

A former official in the Clinton administration chronicles the struggle to identify and retrieve Holocaust victims' financial assets and to determine how to compensate those the Nazis displaced, robbed, and used as slave labor. Eizenstat was a principal player in these complicated efforts. After a brief survey of the situation-and a couple of shots at both the moral blindness of the US during the war and at the publication of Anne Frank's expurgated diary, which he says encouraged 1950s readers to feel hope rather than sufficient moral outrage-the author launches into a lengthy account of all the negotiations, betrayals, surprises, personalities, venues, complications, and compromises that the settlements required. Eizenstat worked on several recovery efforts. The first was to extract from the Swiss banking industry a full accounting of their unconscionable and even nefarious reluctance to locate and return assets of Jewish depositors. This story dominates here, and the author does not have much good to say about either the dilatory Swiss or American class-action lawyers. Eizenstat worked as well to locate stolen personal property; the Nazis took as many as 600,000 paintings, 100,000 of which are still missing. Then he became involved in the negotiations to compensate those forced into slave labor during the war, which resulted in the establishment of a fund of ten billion Deutschmarks. Finally, he went after the Austrians and the French, both nations understandably eager to deemphasize the extent of their involvement in Nazi atrocities. Nonetheless, both ended up cooperating and contributing impressive sums of money to settle. Given what he achieved, it's perhaps unsurprising that Eizenstat's tone is a tad arrogant; "I" is a favored word. He's also given to cliches that clog the prose and excessive detail that sometimes obscures his vital message. Despite its stylistic flaws, though, a compelling narrative of an enormously important story. (8 pp. b&w photos, not seen) (Kirkus Reviews)