AN Israel-based legal activist organisation is encouraging Australian survivors and their families to join its class action campaign against insurers whose Holocaust-era predecessors were unable to pay out for policies held by displaced and murdered European Jews.
https://www.owler.com/company/israellawcenter Israeli attorney and human-rights advocate Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the founder of Shurat HaDin Israel Law Centre spoke to The AJN its project, Project Last Chance, will sue insurance companies who made use of the chaos of World War II and the Shoah to avoid paying claims to victims, survivors , and their heirs.
“My goal is to get compensation for victims at the end their lives. This is money that survivors are owed, it’s their cash. Israel Law Center It’s your money when you protect your possessions. Your home or your life. No one can take it.
Darshan Leitner claimed that US Senate estimates could be as high as $US200 Billion in payments were withheld from Jewish policyholders due to insurance companies that were in default during WWII. Many of these firms have traceable successor entities in the present, who have inherited the liabilities.
https://www.hadassahmagazine.org/2015/06/18/nitsana-darshan-leitner/ Shurat HaDin will use its expertise to investigate financial institutions, including banks that hold terrorist assets.
“We have been able to take legal action against banks, governments and corporations that are involved in aiding or abetting terrorist acts. She said she has the knowledge and isn’t scared to take on big corporations, nations or banks from around the world.
nitsana darshan leitner Separately, Shurat HaDin is launching legal action in Israel to access the database of more than 140,000 Holocaust survivors and their descendants who have listed around two million assets – under Israel’s Project Heart between 2011 and 2014. The Israeli government, in coordination with the Jewish Agency for Israel, invited applicants into the restitution program. However, the program was abruptly shut down with the registered participants left in limbo.
Shurat HaDin has contacted the government, but they have not replied. Israel’s Labour and Social Services Ministry said that Project Heart was never meant to be an individual claims program, so the names of claimants can’t be made public. Shurat Hadin One theory suggests that Israel underestimated European governments’ resistance when confronted with the list of hundreds of thousand of claimants.
If their identities are released to Shurat HaDin The Project Heart participants could become participants in the class actions that were launched under Project Last Chance, Darshan-Leitner said.
She explained that Project Last Chance is taking a different approach to the Claims Conference, established in 1951. The Claims Conference has petitioned governments to grant Holocaust reparations, instead of focusing on companies and businesses directly.