After 35 years of trying in vain to collect on a life insurance policy, the now-elderly children of the late Hermann Smetana finally had some hope.
In May, 85-year-old Ernest Smetana and his 90-year-old sister, Fritzie Wolf, both residents of San Francisco, had a class-action lawsuit filed on their behalf against Italy’s largest insurer, Assicurazioni Generali.
Attorneys said the case could yield billions of dollars in damages.
But now, the lead attorney in the case is fearful that the lawsuit might wither on the vine.
“Rumors are abounding,” said attorney Nancy Sher Cohen, reached by phone at her Los Angeles office, “that Generali is trying to get the United States government” to dismiss all existing litigation against the company.
Late last month, Generali reportedly agreed to settle some $150 million in Holocaust-era claims — but only if the company is protected from U.S. lawsuits.
Such an agreement is appalling, according to Richard Mahan, spokesman for the California Holocaust Insurance Settlement Alliance.
Not only is the $150 million “a pittance of what the settlement should be,” Mahan said, but it could be “years until the survivors actually get any money” because Generali might not make any payments until all lawsuits against the company are dismissed.
Ernest Smetana, who is not in good health, and his sister have been trying to get Generali to honor a claim on their father’s policy since the ’60s.
Hermann Smetana bought the policy in 1928 and paid all the premiums until he was sent to Dachau in 1938, the family contends. The Smetanas say the policy was in effect when he died in 1941.
However, in 1965 Generali said the policy had been canceled for nonpayment in 1938 and that his descendents were entitled to nothing.
Two other Bay Area residents are named as plaintiffs in the suit, which was announced May 24 at a dramatic press conference at the Holocaust Memorial at San Francisco’s Palace of the Legion of Honor. No court date has been set.
Agnes Heyman, a 76-year-old San Franciscan, wants Generali to honor a policy it wrote for her parents, who were killed at Auschwitz.
Paola Oreffice Kulp of Marin is seeking to recover policy proceeds and pension-plan funds. She claims Generali fired her father and grandfather during World War II for being Jewish.
Other policy-holders and their descendents in California are automatically part of the suit, said Sher Cohen, a lawyer at Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe.
However, now that Generali might get off the hook from all lawsuits, everyone is playing a waiting game, Sher Cohen said.
“It has become a political zoo.”
She isn’t even sure if her plaintiffs would be able to share in the $150 million settlement or reach an out-of-court settlement because Generali “is not talking to us.”
The plaintiffs are waiting to see if the U.S. government decides to issue a “statement of interest” regarding Generali and other European insurers.
Such a document would tell the courts that it is in the foreign policy interest of the United States to dismiss all lawsuits against insurers that are cooperating with the International Commission on Holocaust-era Insurance Claims.
Elan Steinberg, the executive director of the World Jewish Congress and a member of the international commission, told Reuters that the U.S. government would soon be asked to write a statement of interest.
Europe’s insurers have never before been offered such a meaty bone for joining the commission.
And many survivors groups aren’t happy about it.
One member of California’s Holocaust-era insurance alliance, Arthur Stern of Beverly Hills, questioned broad settlements as well as the commission’s stance on the statement of interest.
“We are against blanket agreements that may be covering a number of sins and letting certain [transgressions] be hidden forever,” said the 74-year-old survivor from Hungary.
“We are strongly opposed to any agreement that does not reveal all the names of the insurance holders and beneficiaries that the companies have in their possession,” he added.
Steinberg pointed out that a U.S. statement of interest is being used to free Germany and German industry from any new lawsuits if they pay nearly $5 billion to Nazi-era slave laborers.
He said cooperating insurance companies are “entitled” to the same kind of protection “without question.”
Sher Cohen begs to differ.
She blasted the international commission as being “bogus” and catering more to the insurance companies and their stall tactics than to the survivors and their heirs.
Even European insurers that are cooperating members of the commission are denying anywhere from two-thirds to three-fourths of all claims, Sher Cohen said.
“In the end, all we are seeking is equitable and quick payment to Holocaust survivors and their families,” she added. “Many are elderly and we are losing them every single day.”