Report: US Banks Gave Nazis Assets By MARILYN AUGUST .c The Associated Press PARIS (AP) -- Five U.S. banks operating in France during World War II handed over Jewish accounts to the Nazi occupiers, according to a report released Tuesday on the looting of Jewish assets. In the report presented to France's Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a government-appointed panel of experts fingered the French branches of Chase -- now Chase Manhattan Bank -- J.P. Morgan, Guaranty Trust Co. of New York, Bank of the City of New York and American Express for turning over about 100 accounts belonging to Jews. ``The U.S. banks enjoyed a certain amount of freedom and protection until Pearl Harbor,'' said historian Claire Andrieu, a panel member. She said they could have behaved differently from French banks obeying the pro-Nazi French Vichy regime, but didn't. Other foreign banks cited in the report include two British banks, Barclay's and Westminster Foreign Bank Ltd, and the Royal Bank of Canada. There were no details on how much money was in the accounts. The French national deposit bank, which amassed millions of dollars in seized property during the war, said at Tuesday's news conference that since the war, it already had returned about two-thirds of those assets to rightful owners or their heirs. Its representative, Pierre Saragoussi, said about 9.5 million francs -- worth about $3.5 million today -- that were stripped from Jews at the Drancy transit camp remain in state coffers. Upon arrival at Drancy -- the last stop before Auschwitz -- Jews had to give up all their possessions: jewelry, pens, cash, stock certificates and insurance policies. What happened to furniture and other household items has yet to be determined, but the panel documented about 40,000 trainloads of goods confiscated from Jews and shipped to Germany to rebuild bombed German cities. Some items were returned to France, including 2,000 pianos that officials displayed following the Liberation. The panel of experts, called the Matteoli commission, was established by the government two years ago and is headed by former French Resistance activist Jean Matteoli. In Tuesday's report -- an interim report before a final version expected at the end of 1999 -- the panel recommended awarding a lifelong pension to the 10,000 Jewish children orphaned during the war. If approved, the compensation would mark the first monetary awards to French- born children of foreign Jews who suffered persecution and deportation. Under postwar French law, they received no compensation because their parents weren't French. About 75,000 Jews, including 12,000 children, were deported from France to Nazi death camps. Only about 2,500 survived. ``This is a milestone for us,'' said 63-year-old Annette Zaidman, who was orphaned at age 10. ``I just hope we get the pension before we all disappear.'' No details were available on the amount of the stipend or when it might be awarded. A survivors' group, the Sons and Daughters of Jews Deported from France, praised the recommendation. ``Our childhood was ruined; let our old age be made peaceful,'' the group said. The report also said the panel had drawn up an exhaustive list of Jews who passed through Drancy and what was taken from them. The list will not be published, but will be made accessible to anyone proving family ties to a victim. The commission also recommended that Nazi-looted art works and antiques recovered in Germany after the war and currently decorating French official residences around the world be brought back to Paris and put on display.
