"Expert Conclusions" Skewed Against Survivors

A set of "Expert Conclusions" was published Thursday in advance of the Prague Conference. They cover findings and recommendations in each of the five issue areas discussed at the conference.

The “Conclusions” addressing the topic of survivor welfare fail miserably to come to grips with the real issues affecting survivors and demonstrate what has been wrong with the conference process from the outset.

Because of the long disagreement and delay over even allowing the topic of survivor welfare on the agenda, the time devoted to developing these "Conclusions" was too short in comparison to the other issue areas, and lacked any significant deliberation and broad input. No formal preparatory meeting was held and key stakeholders were not asked to participate or provide their input.

The Conclusions are objectionable on a number of points:

• There is no commitment to accountability over past and existing restitution-related funds, only calls for more settlement agreements yielding more funds controlled by a narrow, unaccountable group of agencies.

• There is no acknowledgement of the substantial existing amount of unallocated funds such as Swiss Bank Deposited Assets, large reserves in the control of the Claims Conference, and other funds.These funds should be fully accounted for and directed to address the urgent needs of survivors.

• There is no mention of the need to create a centralized fund devoted exclusively for survivor care. Formal recommendations to establish an international fund for survivor care were submitted to conference organizers by economist Sidney Zabludoff, an expert in Holocaust restitution. Some of his ideas are summarized here. Zabludoff was not subsequently contacted by the conference organizers or the coordinators of the “Special Session” on survivor welfare. His recommendations are entirely absent from the Conclusions.

• The Conclusions explicitly place survivor welfare and Holocaust education/remembrance needs on par – in other words, essential food, housing and medical care is seen as of equal importance with the maintenance of memorial sites and cemeteries. This recommendation flies in the face of widespread opposition among survivors in many countries and among agencies providing essential welfare services.

• A call for “permanent funding” of memorial sites and cemeteries directly conflicts with the priority of addressing to survivor welfare. It was pushed by agencies and institutions that do not serve the humanitarian survivors and would result in a diversion of urgently-needed resources to activities other than the care of survivors.

• The Conclusions include shallow, formulaic calls for “coordinated efforts, ” monitoring activities, and greater “financial support” of services for survivors without a mechanism to assess and measure global need, or allocate resources in a transparent or accountable fashion within a broader consultative or decision process. To the great discredit of the authors of the Conclusions, no explicit mention is made of the severe and tragic levels of poverty among survivors, or of the need to include legitimate survivor representatives in decisions directly impacting the lives of survivors.

Together, these “Conclusions” reflect the interests and priorities of established organizations and reinforce the status quo. It does not reflect the concerns of grassroots survivors and signals to them that the conference does not take their welfare seriously.