ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 31, 1997 TAG: 9703310104
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
U.S. may have held back Jews' money
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government shortchanged Jewish groups seeking restitution after World War II by at least $5.5 million, according to the chief U.S. negotiator from the postwar settlement talks.
Swiss banks have come under international fire for holding onto Jewish assets deposited during the war. But the United States also failed to turn over money deposited by Jews who perished in the Holocaust, said Seymour Rubin, the chief negotiator for postwar restitution.
``A situation very like that in Switzerland existed in the United States,'' Rubin said in a recent letter to Stuart Eizenstat, the undersecretary of commerce heading a U.S. historical review of the period.
Banks in the United States - in contrast to those in Switzerland - were helpful when survivors came looking for the money deposited by Holocaust victims, Rubin said. But there was other money deposited in the U.S. banks that was never claimed, he said.
In the 1950s, Jewish organizations examined bank records in New York and estimated there was $6 million in so-called heirless assets. That $6 million was part of a larger collection of German assets in U.S. banks seized by the War Claims Commission, which doled out the money to U.S. businesses and other groups that suffered wartime losses.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS
Today the Walt Disney Co. unveils a Web site for kids called Disney's Daily Blast, scheduled to launch in April. Loaded with animated characters from the Disney stable, the $4.95 a month service will feature games, stories, comics, activities and news targeted at kids ages 3 to 12. Disney has struck a deal to give subscribers to the Microsoft Network on-line service free access to the site.
LENGTH: Short : 41 linesby CNB