Category Archives: Testimony

Members of HSF-USA deliver official testimony and bear witness to their experiences and claims for reparations.

"With all those promises, I applied to ICHEIC. They said they could not find my father’s name. They sent a check for $1000 as a 'humanitarian payment.' ICHEIC sent out 34,000 of those $1000 checks. Survivors deeply resent the idea of a 'humanitarian payment' instead of the funds we know our parents set aside in case of a disaster. The whole thing was an insult to survivors, and it still is."

David Mermelstein’s Statement to the US Senate

I remember there was a plaque on our in house that said there was insurance, by Generali. My father was a careful businessman, so naturally he would have had insurance to protect his business and his family. Many survivors also remember those plaques, or an agent coming around every two weeks to collect premiums, but most of us 3were too young to know the name of the insurance company. Of course we have no documents for obvious reasons. In 1998, we worked closely with our Florida Insurance Commissioner, Bill Nelson, for a State law to make the companies publish all the names and allow survivors to go to court if they wouldn’t settle. That is when the companies came up with the idea of the ICHEIC commission – because of pressure from the states. Still, everyone told us ICHEIC was voluntary and not binding unless you agreed to a settlement. So, with all those promises, I applied to ICHEIC. They said they could not find my father’s name. They sent a check for $1000 as a“humanitarian payment.”ICHEIC sent out 34,000 of those $1000 checks. Survivors deeply resent the idea of a ‘humanitarian payment’ instead of the funds we know our parents set aside in case of a disaster. The whole thing was an insult to survivors, and it still is.

Samuel J. Dubbin gives testimony before the Senate Judiciary on September 17, 2019.

Attorney Samuel Dubbin’s Testimony to the US Senate

After a decade of incremental home care increases, Members of the Senate Select Committee on Aging cited evidence from its 2014 hearing that “the levels of home care funding by the Claims Conference would meet only 25% of the current needs of impoverished survivors.”

To make matters worse, emergency services funding has not increased at all.

Samuel Dubbin before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Hearing on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims

Unpaid insurance Policies

Izzy Arbeiter
House Government Reform Committee
September 16, 2003

Jack Rubin
House Committee on Foreign Affairs: Subcommittee for Europe
October 3, 2007

Alex Moskovic
House Committee on Foreign Affairs: Subcommittee for Europe
October 3, 2007

Izzy Arbeiter
House Financial Services Committee
February 7, 2008

Jack Rubin
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
May 6, 2008

Renee Firestone
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
November 16, 2011

Herbert Karliner
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
November 16, 2011

David Shaecter
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
November 16, 2011

Renee Firestone
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Holocaust Era Claims in the 21st Century
June 20, 2012
(Spoken Testimony)

Eugenie Lieberman
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
The Struggles of Recovering Assets for Holocaust Survivors
September 18, 2014

Holocaust Survivors Health Care Needs

Jack Rubin
Senate Select Committee on Aging
January 15, 2014

Anat Bar-Cohen
Senate Select Committee on Aging
January 15, 2014

Jack Rubin
House Committee on Foreign Affairs: Subcommittee for Europe
September 18, 2014

Dr. Barbara Paris, MD
House Foreign Affairs Committee
September 18, 2014

Klara Firestone
House Foreign Affairs Committee
September 18, 2014

Eugenie Lieberman
House Foreign Affairs Committee
September 18, 2014

The Red Cross administered archives in Bad Arolsen, Germany finally opened to the public in 2007, allowing evidence of Nazi death camps and government and corporate complicity in genocide to be seen after they were shamefully suppressed for 60 years.

Opening of Bad Arolsen Archives

This page collects journalism and testimony documenting our efforts to finally open public access to the 50 million pages of Nazi Germany archives in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

Holocaust survivors worked in 2006 and 2007 to publicize these documents, which reveal government and corporate complicity in the genocide, and had been suppressed for 60 years.

This transcript of remarks by Hon. Alcee L. Hastings of Florida from December 27, 2006 session of the US House of Representatives Cmte. on Foreign Affairs Europe subcommittee relates concern over the delayed release of the Bad Arolsen Holocaust Archives.

HSF-USA President David Schaecter’s testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe regarding the opening of Bad Arolsen Nazi archives on March 28, 2007.

Leo Rechter’s testimony to the Subcommittee on Europe on March 28, 2007.

This Yom Hashoah Editorial by HSF-USA counsel Samuel J. Dubbin on Yom Hashoah 2007, in the Miami Herald, related how the overdue opening of Bad Arolsen archives relates to survivors’ contemporary needs and the broader systemic failure to hold Holocaust profiteers to justice.