In 1998, a Memorandum of Understanding between European insurance companies, U.S. insurance regulators, as well as Jewish and Holocaust survivor groups, created the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC). The Commission completed its work in 2007, having offered or awarded $306.2 million to 48,000 claimants. (Background.) As part of this process, in 2000 the United States negotiated an agreement with Germany in which the German government agreed to create a foundation whose funds would be used to compensate Holocaust victims who suffered losses from German insurance companies. In return, the U.S. agreed that whenever a German insurance company was sued in a U.S. court on a Holocaust era claim, the State Department would submit a statement that it would be in the best interests of the U.S. for all claims to be settled through the ICHEIC. Two judicial decisions have upheld this arrangement-- American Insurance Assoc. v. Garamendi, (US Sup. Ct., 2003) (state law pre-empted), and Weiss v. Assicurazioni Generali, S.P.A., (2d Cir., 2010) (private suits that fall within the ICHEIC process are pre-empted by U.S. foreign policy interests).
Today's New York Times reports on efforts in Congress on behalf of Holocaust survivors whose claims were not paid through the ICHEIC process. HR 890 (Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2011) would validate state laws requiring disclosure of Holocaust era policies, and would authorize suits in federal court to enforce rights under Holocaust era policies. This effort has created an unusual split between the interest of survivor groups on the one hand and those of the U.S. State Department and Jewish groups involved in setting up the ICHEIC on the other which oppose the proposed legislation.
