Thursday, November 04, 1999
Chesley to receive Shalom Peace Award
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati lawyer Stanley M. Chesley will receive the Jewish National Fund's Shalom Peace Award on Saturday for legal work on behalf of Holocaust victims and contributions to the wider Jewish community.
Mr. Chesley is the ninth person and second Tristate recipient of the award since it was initiated in 1984. Carl H. Lindner Jr. was the fourth recipient.
JNF says the broader purpose of the award is to honor individuals who have contributed to shalom bayit,or peace within the community.
The award will be presented at a JNF dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Funds raised by the $1,000-a-seat dinner and ads in the dinner brochure will go to Israeli water projects.
In part, the award honors Mr. Chesley's continuing representation of Holocaust survivors and their heirs against Swiss banks and others who held assets and property of Jews killed by the Nazis and their allies.
Mr. Chesley said in an interview last week that the World Jewish Restitution Organization and Claims Conference approached him last year for his expertise on class actions they had filed in U.S. courts.
“I said I'd do it on one condition,” Mr. Chesley said in a recent interview, “that it be pro bono.” That is, for free.
Mr. Chesley said he will receive none of the fees available to attorneys working to settle claims against the Swiss and Austrian banks, German companies that used slave labor, and European insurers who have refused to honor life insurance claims by families of Jews who died in concentration and death camps.
Mr. Chesley said two “key members of my firm,” Paul M. DeMarco and Jean M. Geoppinger, are working with him on the cases.
In January, Jewish groups, Holocaust survivors and Swiss banks reached a $1.25 billion settlement, moving one step closer to compensating some victims of the Nazis.
Mr. Chesley called it “a landmark settlement” that ends two years of litigation that has dominated U.S.-Swiss relations and marred the image of Switzerland, which declared neutrality during World War II.
U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in New York will appoint a special master to consider all propos als for the distribution of the money and to identify the beneficiaries. That special master will notify potential claimants through newspaper ads and other public means throughout the world.
Parties in the class-action include Swiss banks UBS AG and Credit Suisse.
Advocates say Jews deposited money in Swiss banks as the Nazis gained power in Europe, expecting to retrieve it later. Heirs and survivors say those banks could not find accounts or in some cases requested nonexistent death certificates of victims killed in Nazi camps.
Swiss banks have made a $250 million deposit in an escrow account. The rest is to be deposited in the next three years.
Mr. Chesley said he expects Austrians to settle for around $40 million. The German case involves billions, and negotiations focus on how many.
Mr. Chesley would not estimate how much he hoped to recover from the insurance companies.
“That's just a piece of it,” Mr. Chesley said of the legal work being honored by JNF. The Shalom Peace Award is “for my overall work in the Jewish world” over the past 40 years.
That includes significant contributions to the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) programs to rescue Jews from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia, he said.
“But I've been involved in other things than money,” he added, including service on the national boards of the UJA, Joint Distribution Committee, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel Bonds, Hebrew Union College and American Jewish Committee.
JNF — known best by blue coin containers on store counters — is a 99-year-old organization dedicated to education, land purchase, development and reforestation in Palestine, and, after 1948, in the state of Israel.
“I've been giving to them ever since I was a kid,” Mr. Chesley said.
In addition to Mr. Lindner, recipients include: Vice President Al Gore; retired Gen. Colin Powell; slain Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's widow, Jehan Sadat; former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel.
JNF spokeswoman Suzanne Rosenblatt said Mr. Lindner was honored for his contributions to peace “through his philanthropic efforts.”
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