Eizenstat to take U.S. Treasury post, resign as point man on Shoah issues
WASHINGTON (JTA) — U.S. Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat was nominated Wednesday by President Clinton to be deputy treasury secretary.
As the administration’s point man on Shoah restitution issues, Eizenstat has played a key role in recent years in helping to provide a moral and monetary accounting of various countries’ financial dealings with Nazi Germany.
Eizenstat is expected to succeed Lawrence Summers, whom Clinton tapped to succeed outgoing Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
FBI kept file on artist Marc Chagall, suspecting him of spying for Russia
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The FBI suspected that the Russian Jewish painter Marc Chagall was a spy for the USSR, according to the new issue of the magazine ARTnews.
A Yale University professor discovered that the agency, which under long-time director J. Edgar Hoover kept files on many writers, artists and political activists, compiled 300 pages on the Russian-born painter. The FBI concluded that Chagall was a “political crackpot” but not a spy.
Chagall lived in the United States from 1941 to 1948, but after that was denied visas to return until 1958, when he returned as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago.