The Victim's Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle Over the Debts of the Holocaust [Hardcover]

John Authers (Author), Richard Wolffe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 4, 2002

Two reporters from the Financial Times go behind the scenes to detail both nobility and corruption in the fight for compensation of Holocaust survivors. Half a century after World War II, a small group of Americans launched a campaign to confront the world with the fact that many assets looted by the Nazis had never been returned to their owners. They wanted to write the final chapter in the story of the Holocaust's survivors, most of whom were nearing death, and wanted recognition of the debt that these victims were owed. Backed by class action lawsuits and threats of economic sanctions, a disparate group of lawyers, politicians, and Jewish advocacy groups mounted an enormous challenge against some of the world's largest corporations and governments to demand what they felt was due. After several years, they won a historic settlement of 5 billion dollars in reparations. But what began as a moral crusade had degenerated into a bare-knuckled battle that opened up painful debates across the world and within the Jewish community over justice and how to achieve it. In The Victim's Fortune, John Authers and Richard Wolffe offer a spellbinding investigative account of this international struggle -- an extraordinary political drama which unfolds against the backdrop of the twentieth century's most devastating crime.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"You can't make the dead good again. We can only take a modicum of justice--a modicum of attempting to somehow right wrongs in a small way for those who are still alive." So remarked a Holocaust survivor on receiving compensation--small, but meaningful--for the tortures he had suffered six decades before. That compensation, for him and thousands of other victims, was a long time in coming. When it did, it was not done out of innate goodness on, say, the part of the banks of Switzerland, which had held billions of dollars deposited there by men and women who would not live to claim them--even though, financial journalists Authers and Wolffe are quick to remark, those banks were staffed by good and well-intentioned people. What compelled those banks, along with companies and governments throughout the world, to do so was massive legal action, a chain of class-action lawsuits that stretched out for half a decade, brought on by lawyers, victims, and civil rights groups in a dense storm of argumentation. In this careful, complex study, Authers and Wolffe detail how these actions took shape against very long odds. Their book is a fascinating case study in justice served--if, some critics continue to charge, too little and too late. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

Authers and Wolffe, journalists for the Financial Times, trace the efforts made from 1995 to date to win compensation for those who lost assets and endured forced labor at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators in WWII. They talk to the heads of Jewish organizations and senior American government officials, all of whom were fighting on behalf of the victims, as well as to the victims' lawyers. Using strategies such as threatened boycotts, calculated emotional outbursts, public pressure campaigns and class action suits, this group of Americans targeted European banks that had pocketed balances belonging to Holocaust victims, insurers who never paid out life insurance proceeds, and industrial concerns that benefited from forced (and even slave) labor during the war. Though impressive settlements have been negotiated, the story is a dispiriting one, regardless of how one feels about reparations: each new episode in the battle generated recriminations and bitterness among the plaintiffs, and distribution is the most contentious phase of all. Some of the lawyers are drawing multimillion-dollar fees while their clients receive amounts in the low thousands. Certain Jewish organizations that had led the compensation campaign are now fighting Holocaust survivors for control of the money. Authers and Wolffe's well-researched and nuanced book demonstrates how the struggle for reparations has simultaneously been a fight for justice and a vindictive squabble over money.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (June 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066212642
• ISBN-13: 978-0066212647
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,635,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars good read which brings 'boring' negotiations to life, August 1, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Victim's Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle Over the Debts of the Holocaust (Hardcover)

The Victim's Fortune is a good read and it offers interesting insights into the compensation talks saga. It is written in the style of `barbarians at the gate,' i.e. it tells a story by following the people involved and the personal axes they have to grind.

At the time, I followed the news of the Swiss banks and German companies with half an eye, dismissing it as (tedious) legal blackmail. But this book, which fell into my lap by chance, brought the whole dispute to life for me, including yes the greedy lawyers but also the victims and companies who tried to do the right thing. As with everything, it is much more interesting when you feel you know the people involved. Contrary to a previous review, the authors do not simplify the conflicts or the characters, which is a strong point. The 'gossip' in the book is what makes it human, and a book about these settlements that does not take the human angle runs the risk of being exceedingly boring.

I also learned a thing or two about the grounds for compensation-the use of slave labor by daimler, even ford; and the arrogance with which insurance companies asked for a death certificate to honor life insurance of holocaust victims. As a victim says, 'at auschwitz, they didn't give death certificates.'

But it's not just for novices- those with a greater knowledge and interest in the compensation dispute will certainly find an extra couple of layers of intrigue and emotion.

The book is also about the difficulty of trying to compensate for something as profoundly horrific as the holocaust, the uselessness of monetary compensation.

For such a complicated issue, with so many actors involved, it is quite an easy and pleasant read.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An epic account of an epic struggle, July 30, 2002

By 

Walter Snurd (Lewes, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Victim's Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle Over the Debts of the Holocaust (Hardcover)

The publisher says "John Authers and Richard Wolffe offer a spellbinding investigative account" of the international struggle to retrieve some of the debts owed to Holocaust victims for more than half a century by bankers, insurers and industrial executives. I rarely agree with a publisher's endorsement of abook but in the case of "The Victim"s Fortune" I can only agree with the judgement.
The authors meticulously give their sources for what participants say and do, and, by having visited many of the major protagonists are able to sketch accurate and very lively pen-pictures not only of people but of locations: there are 45 pages of notes and sources and a full index - the general reader may not need them but they are there to reinforce the veracity of the account.
It would have been easy to have been less than even-handed to some of the powerful characters encountered in the book: it is a tribute to the authors that they maintain an even keel while charting the reader through a variety of events which could easily have seemed an incoherent maelstrom. The story starts in 1995 and culminates in June 2001 when payments of $5000 begin to be made to the dwindling band of holocaust survivors. The six years saw the involvement of a swathe of characters, from Jewish leaders, lawyers, bankers, insurers, judges, to President Clinton and Christoph Meili, a security guard at UBS who found in the course of his patrol that key documents had been put ready in the shredding room. In return for his whistle-blowing he had to flee his native Switzerland when he received death threats and warnings that his children would be kidnapped, and make a home in USA, the first Swiss citizen ever to seek asylum there on grounds of political persecution.
It is a roller-coaster of a book with new, well-defined and important characters arriving in most chapters. It is a fascinating read both for the issues involved and the egos on display. I have only had time to read the book once and will certainly do so again. It is no exaggeration to refer to the epic battle over the debts of the holocaust: I am profoundly grateful to the authors for opening my eyes to the reality of how deals get made, who truly benefits in such a tangled web. Lawyers, companies, governments even, had their own agenda: the payment was too little, too late; to quote one former slave-labourer "if it had been earlier or larger, it would have been no more moral".
This book is a triumph and deserves to be widely read.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Epic Saga Of Redressing Justice Long Overdue, September 5, 2002

By 

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Victim's Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle Over the Debts of the Holocaust (Hardcover)

John Auteurs and Richard Wolffe have written a thorough, often mesmerizing, account on recent efforts to win compensation for Holocaust survivors from Swiss, German, Austrian and Italian banks and insurance firms and German and Austrian firms. "The Victim's Fortune" chronicles how an unlikely alliance of American Jewish leaders and lawyers successfully confronted these banks and firms, winning long-overdue compensation to those who had lost savings and life insurance policies to the Nazis and their allies or were slave laborers working for German and Austrian firms during World War Two. To their credit the authors wade successfully through an intriguing mix of characters, covering in separate chapters legal battles in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Austria. This important book should be required reading by those interested in World War Two, The Holocaust, and present efforts in seeking compensation from those countries and individuals who supported Al Qaeda's dastardly terrorist attacks on the United States last year.