VANCOUVER -- Austrian businessmen Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and Otto Pick
transferred ownership of their sugar refinery to a Swiss bank for safekeeping
shortly before fleeing the Nazis in March, 1938.Months later, the bank actively co-operated in the sale of the Jewish businessmen's shares in the sugar refinery to a Nazi purchaser at a small fraction of their value and without the businessmen's consent.
After 67 years, the theft of the sugar refinery, which provided 20 per cent of Austria's sugar before the war, had become a piece of family folklore only vaguely remembered by some of the descendants.
But in a stinging rebuke of Swiss bankers during the Nazi era, a New York court has awarded $21.8-million (U.S.) this week to the heirs of the businessmen, including five children of prominent British Columbian Peter Bentley, chairman of timber giant Canfor Corp.
The award is the largest payment yet from a $1.25-billion (U.S.) fund set up by a consortium of Swiss banks for Holocaust victims.
"This award is merely a striking example of the widespread betrayal of Jewish clients by Swiss banks," says a report setting out reasons for the award. "Having marketed themselves to the Jews of Europe as a safe haven for their property, Swiss banks repeatedly turned Jewish-owned property over to Nazis in order to curry favour with them."
It is about freakin' time.
Read the rest, as they say.
