Insurance Benefits for Holocaust Victims and Their Families
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has approved a settlement of claims by Holocaust survivors and their families against Italian insurance company Assicurazioni Generali SpA for refusing to honor life insurance policies purchased by people of the Jewish faith and other victims of Nazi persecution prior to World War II.
The settlement resolves the majority of Holocaust victims' claims against Generali, the last of several European insurance companies to settle such claims. The combined settlements of all Holocaust insurance related class actions are expected to pay an estimated $6 billion to Holocaust victims and their heirs.
Plaintiffs, who filed suit against the European insurance companies, have produced evidence showing that their families purchased life, disability and property insurance in pre-war Europe that insurance companies refused to honor in the decades following the War. For decades, insurance companies claimed that they "could not locate polices," that "policies were nationalized," that policyholders "stopped paying premiums so policies were cancelled," and even that the policies were void because heirs could not produce a death certificate for loved ones exterminated by the Nazis.
Linda Gerstelof Anderson Kill & Olick, P.C. a law firm that served as co-lead counsel in the original suit filed in 1997, said, "We applaud the Court's approval of this settlement, which imposes no cap on the amount to be allocated among class members and provides for payments based on a formula that takes into consideration the amounts due on policies, currency conversion and interest. It's been a long road, but step by step a measure of justice has been obtained for thousands of Holocaust survivors who lost so much and received so little in the way of restitution for too long."