Hungarian Gold Train Case

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE
Oct. 11, 2004

HUNGARIAN GOLD TRAIN CASE

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in supporting the quest for justice in the Hungarian Gold Train case. I have heard from these Holocaust survivors. Their story is painful, and the evidence is overwhelming. Our moral duty is clear.

One of the most troubling aspects of this is that we should not be having this debate at all. The facts of the Gold Train incident are not really in dispute. And for all the effort expended by the Federal Government in court trying to evade these facts, the facts were disclosed to the world by the Federal Government itself.

The reason we know about the Gold Train is because of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets, PCHA. In the 1990s, our own Government told other nations they should look into their pasts-face the facts-and make redress as appropriate. Seventeen nations established commissions to do that. So did we. This Congress created the PCHA to study the past and reveal the truth. The Commission was fortunate to have Edgar Bronfman, then chairman of the World Jewish Congress, as its head. Stuart Eizenstat, the government's top official dealing with these matters, was a key member. It had a full staff of historians and researchers and a budget of several million dollars.

The Commission found that the record of the United States was a source of pride. Our Nation not only liberated Europe, but after the war, served as a model for how to handle the assets that had been stolen from Europe's Jews-with one glaring exception. In 1999, the Commission issued a report on the Gold Train. After half a century of silence and coverup, the Federal Government stated that the Gold Train was an "egregious failure of the United States to follow its own policy regarding restitution of Holocaust victims' property after World War II." We cannot be proud of this conduct, but we can all be proud that the Government made this admission.

We should all have expected that the next step was to make good on these disclosures and this conclusion. The Government should have compensated these survivors. Instead, the survivors were forced to go to court. The Justice Department is fighting them inch by inch.

One would expect the Justice Department to defend the Government's PCHA report. Instead, the Justice Department has disputed the accuracy of the report and claimed that the Commission withdrew its report. However, as Chairman Edgar Bronfman has made plain, the Progress Report is an "accurate account of the United States' handling and disposition of the 'Gold Train' property." Bronfman also has noted that, "In no way . . . did the PCHA intend to retract or retreat from the findings of the Progress Report." In fact, Mr. Bronfman points out, the report is prominently displayed on the commission's website.

Our Nation has a duty to the past. It has a duty to these people. They are dying every day. The Justice Department should sit down and resolve this matter with these survivors. That is the right thing to do.