Of all the Holocaust litigation that erupted in the 199os, that over life insurance might to the uninitiated have seemed the simplest. There were policies and there were deaths, so there should have been payments. Instead, says Michael Bazyler, a professor at Whittier law school, in California, and author of a book on the subject ("Holocaust Justice: the Battle for Restitution in America's Courts"), the insurance dispute has been the most intractable, in terms both of amounts paid and of claimants satisfied. For many years, insurers denied the existence of policies, or acknowledged their existence but refused payment because policyholders' heirs could not produce official death certificates (a common circumstance for somebody who died in a concentration camp). Attempts to overcome such obstacles, notably the creation five years ago of an international commission to sift claims and make payments, have so far produced little.
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