Oskar Schindler saved thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi death camps in World War II – but it was Rembrandt who rescued Sybilla Katz Goldstein and her family.
Goldstein’s dad, Nathan Katz, a Dutch art dealer, traded Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Man: Member of the Raman Family” to Nazi strongman Hermann Goering to ensure his family’s safe passage to Switzerland.
The painting was later recovered and sold by the family, but dozens of other works by Old Masters that the Nazis looted when they stormed the Katz home are still missing – and Goldstein plans to do something about it.
Armed with newly declassified U.S. government documents that prove her family’s art collection was pillaged by the Nazis and channeled through Switzerland, Goldstein will challenge the landmark plan to distribute $1.25 billion in reparations to Holocaust survivors.
Goldstein is one of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of survivors who lawyers and activists expect to pack Judge Edward Korman’s courtroom in Brooklyn Federal Court tomorrow to contest a multi-tiered distribution plan for the settlement money being paid by the Swiss banks.
For years, Holocaust survivors and heirs have battled the banks for the assets they or their parents deposited for safekeeping as the Nazis stormed across Europe.
Until just recently, Swiss bankers were demanding impossible-to-produce death certificates and other documentation before they would pay out claims.
Under the distribution plan, about $800 million of the $1.25 billion settlement would go to death-camp survivors who prove they hid money and assets in the banks.
The remaining $450 million would go to wartime slave laborers, refugees and victims whose possessions were looted by the Nazis.
The laborers and refugees would be paid small cash settlements, according to the plan, but the Looted Assets class money – about $100 million of the $450 million – would go to charity “because of the difficulty and expense” of tracking down and verifying all the stolen property.