Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to introduce the ``Holocaust Victims Insurance Fairness Act''--legislation to provide states with the authority to assist survivors of the Holocaust.
Before and during the Holocaust, millions of European Jews purchased life insurance policies with certain European insurance companies as a form of savings and investment for the future. After World War II, however, insurance companies rejected many claims presented by Holocaust survivors or heirs of Holocaust victims because the claimants lacked the requisite documentation such as death certificates that had been confiscated by the Nazi regime.
Some families have tried for years to obtain promised benefits, but insurance companies continue to demand that the survivors produce non-existent documents. In 1998, the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC) was established to address the issue of unpaid insurance policies and to expedite payouts to Holocaust victims.
ICHEIC has received over 90,000 claims, but has only made a few thousand settlement offers. This shortfall has forced disillusioned claimants to turn to the states for assistance in obtaining the swift justice they deserve. To continue to deny these claims would be a further injustice to these survivors and would only serve to perpetuate the horrible acts that occurred years ago.
In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court in ALA v. Garamendi recently struck down a California law aimed at assisting thousands of Holocaust survivors and their families in collecting on millions of dollars of outstanding Holocaust-era insurance policies. The court narrowly rejected the right of states to require insurance companies doing business in their state to disclose information about Holocaust survivor insurance policies.
The court in Garamendi maintained that the president's preference is for Holocaust-era insurance claims to be handled by the International Commission of Holocaust-Era Insurance Claims--an approach that has wholly failed Holocaust victims.
I believe that states should have the authority to assist survivors of the Holocaust to recover benefits from policies lost or stolen before and during these tragic events. Therefore, I am introducing legislation to specifically allow states to collect insurance information for victims of the Holocaust. Unlike similar pieces of legislation that have been introduced, the ``Holocaust Victims Insurance Fairness Act'' also explicitly expresses Congressional disapproval of any Executive branch policy or agreement that preempts State efforts to collect insurance information for victims of the Holocaust to resolve outstanding claims. Please join me in this effort to finally provide justice to those who have been denied it for so long.