from: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0413jews-goldtrain13.html

Claims filed for U.S. loot
Jay Weaver
Miami Herald
Apr. 13, 2003 12:00 AM

MIAMI - At the beginning of World War II, Magda Kalman lived in an elegantly furnished apartment in the Jewish quarter of Budapest.

Near the end of the war, the Nazis and their Hungarian collaborators stole her family's Persian rugs, jewelry, paintings and other valuables.

"They took everything from us, and we had to start all over again," the 86-year-old Miami Beach, Fla., grandmother said recently.

Kalman recently joined thousands of other Holocaust survivors who are suing to be compensated for their losses. But instead of going after Germany or Hungary, they have filed a class-action lawsuit in Miami against the United States, the same country that liberated their homeland from the Nazis.

Just after the Allied victory on May 8, 1945, the U.S. Army found the so-called Gold Train, 40 cars loaded with items looted from Hungarian Jews, in Austria on its way to Germany. Several American generals ended up using the most valuable items in their offices and residences, and later the U.S. government had much of the property sold at auctions for refugee relief.

Resistance

The group of Hungarian Jews who had migrated to the United States claim in the 2-year-old suit that the Gold Train valuables belonged to them and should have been returned after the war. But they have encountered resistance.

"We feel our property might have been on that train," said Kalman's daughter, Marietta Vogel, 65, of North Bay Village, Fla. "It was something from our family heritage."

A Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment.

At a recent hearing, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz reprimanded government officials for "dragging their feet" in turning over records from the National Archives that might be helpful to the Gold Train plaintiffs.

The government, which had first tried to have the case dismissed because the claims were so old, informed the Gold Train group's attorneys recently that they could look at the first batch of records.

To make the case, the judge required that members of the suit supply proof that their valuables were on the Gold Train. After nearly 60 years, that is a major challenge.

Double standard

"The judge wants us to directly connect their stolen property to the Gold Train, and that is not an easy thing to do," said attorney Samuel Dubbin, who represents the class. He accused the government of applying a "double standard" to the Gold Train case.

Since the mid-1990s, U.S. officials have adopted a hard-line stance to persuade reluctant European governments to pay Holocaust claims for slave labor, property losses and other harm suffered by Jews and non-Jews during the war. After six years of talks, the Germans, Swiss, Austrians and French agreed to settlements totaling billions of dollars.

Now the U.S. government must hold itself to the same moral standard it imposed on the Europeans, Dubbin said.

A former senior Clinton administration official who led the European negotiations agreed. Stuart E. Eizenstat said the U.S. government should start dealing directly with the Holocaust survivors who believe their valuables were on the Gold Train.

Eizenstat, the former deputy secretary of the Treasury and U.S. ambassador to the European Union, said the government has had an "admirable record" in spearheading Holocaust victims' claims, but the Gold Train case is a glaring exception.

"This should be settled out of court," Eizenstat said. "There should be some effort to return what can be found to the Hungarian Jewish community. And if it cannot be found, there should be a general payment to this community."