Swiss Banks Say $34 Million May Belong to Holocaust Victims

PARIS — Leading Swiss banks announced Tuesday that they have discovered $34 million in dormant accounts that may belong to Holocaust victims and said they will help Jewish survivors and their heirs track down lost assets.

Lifting the veil of secrecy on one of the most controversial legacies of the war, the Swiss Bankers’ Assn. said a partial survey of a dozen major banks that conducted most of the country’s financial business in 1945 revealed nearly 900 abandoned accounts containing funds that may have been deposited by Jews and others who were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis.

But the World Jewish Congress and other agencies acting on behalf of Holocaust victims say the forsaken deposits represent only a fraction of the wealth of Jewish Nazi victims. Far larger assets, estimated by some experts to be worth several billion dollars, were confiscated from Jewish victims in Eastern Europe and may have been stashed by the Nazis in Swiss accounts or safe-deposit boxes.

Nazi SS boss Heinrich Himmler, for example, is believed to have dispatched a hoard of paintings, jewelry and money stolen from Hungarian Jews to Switzerland toward the end of the war. New information on “Himmler’s Treasure” and other Nazi booty taken from East European Jews has come to light from the archives of various Communist secret services since the collapse of the Soviet empire six years ago.

On Thursday, Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, will appeal for greater cooperation in determining the fate of wartime Jewish assets when he meets with Swiss President Kaspar Villiger and Swiss banking leaders, WJC officials said. Israel has authorized Bronfman to negotiate with the Swiss on its behalf.

The controversy over the lost accounts grew out of a rising public clamor at home this year--during 50th anniversary observances commemorating the end of the war--to examine connections between Swiss banks and the Nazi rape of Europe.

This year, the Swiss government for the first time formally apologized for its treatment of the Jews, many of whom were denied entry to the neutral nation during the war and sent back to Germany.