(WASHINGTON) – Legislation aimed at accelerating the settlement of insurance claims stemming from the Holocaust, authored by U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), was approved today by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
 
The committee approved the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2007 (H.R. 1746) by voice vote. The Ros-Lehtinen initiative comes nine years after the establishment of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC). Critics of the Commission suggest that it has failed to adequately address the insurance claims issue. Since its inception, insurance companies have made payouts on less than five percent of the policies estimated to have been sold to Holocaust victims.

“For more than 60 years insurance companies have refused to make good on policies owned by Holocaust survivors or families of victims, arguing that the survivors and their families didn’t have documentation such a death certificates and insurance records,” Ros-Lehtinen said.
 
“It’s clear that death camps like Auschwitz didn’t issue death certificates and very few Holocaust survivors were able to salvage any documents given the horrific circumstances under which they lived in Nazi tyranny,” she added.
 
“The commission ended its work earlier this year leaving thousands of Holocaust victims no recourse to pursue legitimate insurance claims and failing to compel insurance companies to publicly disclose the identities of tens of thousands of policy holders from this dark chapter in Europe’s history,” said Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Republican on the committee.

“This legislation offers an important opportunity to bring long-awaited justice and closure to Holocaust survivors and their families,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

H.R. 1746, the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2007:

• Requires insurance companies doing business in the United States to disclose the names of Holocaust-era insurance policy holders and creates a registry with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The registry will offer Holocaust survivors and their descendants actual proof of the insurance policy’s existence
  
• Requires the Secretary of State to seek agreements with European countries to make information on covered policies available to the registry.
  
• Creates a federal cause of action, allowing Holocaust survivors or their heirs to bring claims against insurance companies in U.S. courts and recover under their insurance policies.
   

######