Spoils of war

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States has concluded that American military forces in Europe at the end of World War II “generally behaved in a commendable way” in returning Nazi loot to the Jews from whom it was confiscated — “with one notable exception.”

One notable and appalling exception: On May 16, 1945, nine days after the German surrender, a train laden with gold, art, antiques and other valuables stolen from the Hungarian victims of that criminal regime was diverted from its rightful owners to Austria, where rugs, paintings, silverware, china, linens and other valuables were divvied up among at least five American generals to furnish their homes, offices, villas and private railroad cars. At least 1,100 paintings and a suitcase full of gold dust that were turned over to Austraian officials were never seen again.

The commission, formed a year ago to track the fate of Holocaust victims’ assets that may have come under American control, worked quickly and thoroughly in this investigation, a sharp contrast to the half-century of foot-dragging seen elsewhere. The explanation the commission offered for this particular wrong — the postwar politics of Central Europe made it imperative that these treasures not fall into the hands of the Soviet forces controlling Hungary — is sadly similar to the explanations offered elsewhere. Whether it’s billions in gold — in both bullion and dental-filling form — residing in Swiss banks, paintings that inexplicably turned up in art museums, life-insurance policies not honored or slave labor not paid for by companies that still prosper, expediency remains the excuse for the inexcusable.

This issue of returning to rightful owners property stolen by the largest and most brutal criminal enterprise in modern history will not go away, nor should it. The passage of time, the difficulty of piecing together scattered records, the fading recollections are not justification. They are complicity.

The persistence of Holocaust victims and their survivors in this matter is a story as remarkable as the crime is heinous. For more than four decades, governments, museums and banks hoped it all would go away, assumed it all would be forgotten.

The publication in 1989 of historian Arthur Smith’s “Nazi Gold” jarred the world’s memory. Fiftieth anniversary observations of various World War II events and the collapse of the Soviet Union brought forth more recollections and documents. In 1995, billionaire Edgar Bronfman, chairman of the Seagram Co. and head of the World Jewish Congress made the unclaimed Jewish deposits in Swiss banks a headline issue. Two years later, former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York took up the cause by releasing declassified U.S. military intelligence documents tracing gold stolen by the Nazis from Belgian Jews to Swiss banks. Just last year, the United States and 38 other nations launched a drive to locate stolen art. The doggedness of Undersecretary of Commerce Stuart Eizenstat has kept these exhumed crimes from being reburied.

And now the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets has brought this issue to the home front. The Pentagon has so far been reluctant to provide any substantive information on the five generals cited in the report or on the wherabouts of the stolen property. That is an unfortunate and unacceptable position. The more time passes, the more rotten these spoils of war become.