News Archive

Email A Friend

More News

April 22, 2024
California Division of Workers’ Compensation Posts Updated Time of Hire Notice

April 22, 2024
Sullivan on Comp Launches ChatSOC. It's an Innovative Chatbot for California Workers' Compensation Professionals Integrated with an Authoritative Legal Treatise

April 19, 2024
Workers Compensation Bill 2024: One percent of employee’s salary to contribute to workers’ compensation fund in Kenya.

April 15, 2024
Colorado Worker Shows Head Injury Happened as a Consequence of a Knock on the Head at Work

Nearly three years after an international commission was organized to resolve insurance disputes arising from the Holocaust, the leading German insurance company, Allianz, has not paid a single claim, according to a page 1 story in the Los Angeles Times today.

Citing internal commission documents, the story by Times legal affairs writer Henry Weinstein said, rather than addressing claim demands, a consortium of insurance companies has “taken steps to make collection more difficult, including filing lawsuits in California and Florida to try to contest statutes designed to make collection easier.

“The companies also have not honored a commitment to provide a complete listing of potential unpaid policyholders, according to insurance regulators and Jewish advocates.”

Weinstein said Allianz, for example, has provided only 380 names so far out of a list of 1.5 million policies.

According to Nat Shapo, director of the Holocaust task force established in 1998 by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), “Production of lists and giving claimants an opportunity to know if they are on the list or their relatives were on the list is essential for people to have confidence that all reasonable efforts have been taken to try to solve the situation.”

While European companies maintain that producing the lists would be an arduous process and possibly violate European privacy laws, US officials say the lists are instrumental in the process of settling claims.

And while the commission and other European insurers—including AXA (France) Winterthur and Zurich (Switzerland) and Assisicurazioni (Italy)—are wrangling their views, the American Holocaust commission has posted a list of possible insurance policyholders on its websites at www.icheic.org.

The chairman of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, Lawrence Eagleburger, said the commission has compiled the list from sources including public archives and insurance company records and will update the information as new names become available.

Many of the names were obtained through the commission’s independent research archives in Germany, Poland and Ukraine. Names were also supplied by the Czech Republic Ministry of Finance and the Washington State Insurance commissioner, who is a participant in the ICHEIC process.  Collectively, the names now found on the commission website originate from Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain and Ukraine, said Eagleburger, the former US Secretary of State.

“ICHEIC’s independent research is an integral part of our work, and we will continue to comb additional archives throughout Europe to identify the names of policyholders and potential claimants,” he added.