The president’s point man on Holocaust assets instantly knew Clinton had picked the right Bay Area person to serve on a presidential panel.
That person is the Rev. Cecil Williams of San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church. When Ken Klothen, executive director of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, came here to meet Williams late last month, the minister had assembled representatives of local Holocaust groups.
As one of 12 prominent Americans selected in December to be on the commission, Williams will participate in the probe of Holocaust assets that came under the control of the U.S. government.
“Rev. Williams has a great reach throughout this community,” Klothen said. “The meeting was enormously helpful to find how local communities can relate to our work. It was my first opportunity to meet with local groups.”
At the lunchtime gathering, Klothen spoke to Williams and representatives from the Holocaust Center of Northern California, the Jewish Community Relations Council and Disability Rights Advocates, which is fighting for reparations for disabled victims of the Holocaust.
Klothen intends to visit each of the 12 commissioners to find out more about their objectives.
The federal official, a Philadelphia resident and the child of Jews who escaped from Germany, formerly served as general counsel for the Corporation for National Service, the federal agency that oversees all national volunteer programs.
With help from 15 researchers who will dig through international archives, the commission is looking for evidence of gold, jewelry, bank accounts, stocks, insurance policies and artworks pilfered from Holocaust victims and now held by the United States.
Such valuables came under the government’s sway when Nazi assets were frozen or seized by the U.S. during the Hitler years. While the assets were stolen mostly from Jews, some were taken from Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and the disabled.
Commissioners will review the research findings and then make policy recommendations to the U.S. government. That could mean proposing legislation and calling for the government to repay victims or their heirs.
“A sense of closure on this issue is necessary as soon as possible since many survivors are so aged. I want to see us finish our work before the century is over,” Klothen said.
Klothen said he could not speculate on the total value of the assets. The commission will meet quarterly and must complete their work by the end of next year.
Klothen said that the researchers should be so thorough as to “develop standards that other groups must meet when looking into Holocaust claims.”
With 17 U.S. commissions examining various Holocaust reparation issues, Klothen acknowledged that such groups tend to blend together confusingly. While some commissions do share research results, Klothen said he hoped to hold a national summit enabling the groups to convene and pool resources.
“We don’t have a high public profile yet since we are just getting started. We want to find out in particular how we can make our work known to survivors,” Klothen said.
For Klothen, the urgency of the commission is quite clear. Both his parents, who are still alive, fled Berlin just months before the Nazis began regular deportations to concentration camps.
“I was concerned before I took the job whether I’d be bringing up memories they didn’t want to exhume,” he said. “But then I didn’t want to wake up in 20 years, hear that the last Holocaust survivor had died, and not taken advantage of the opportunity to help rectify one of the great wrongs of the century.”
His parents, he found out, greatly approve of the work. They send him press clippings and connect their son to friends who had assets confiscated by the Nazis. “They’ve been very supportive,” Klothen said.