Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II

The U.S. official who spearheaded the fight to reclaim the stolen and confiscated assets of Holocaust survivors and other victims of World War II tells the inside story of that fight and how it was won.

In the second half of the 1990s, Stuart Eizenstat was perhaps the most controversial U.S. foreign policy official in Europe. His mission had nothing to do with Russia, the Middle East, Yugoslavia, or any of the other hotspots of the day. Rather, Eizenstat's mission was to provide justice--albeit belated and imperfect justice--for the victims of World War II. Imperfect Justice is Eizenstat's account of how the Holocaust became a political and diplomatic battleground fifty years after the war's end, as the issues of dormant bank accounts, slave labor, confiscated property, looted art, and unpaid insurance policies convulsed Europe and America. He recounts the often heated negotiations with the Swiss, the Germans, the French, the Austrians, and various Jewish organizations, showing how these moral issues, shunted aside for so long, exposed wounds that had never healed and conflicts that had never been properly resolved. Though we will all continue to reckon with the crimes of World War II for a long time to come, Eizenstat's account shows that it is still possible to take positive steps in the service of justice.

Stuart E. Eizenstat served as the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Under Secretary of Commerce, Under Secretary of State, and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration, from 1993 to 2001. While carrying the burdens of these senior positions, he had a dual role leading the Clinton Administration's efforts on Holocaust-related issues. An honors graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and of Harvard Law School, he was also chief White House domestic policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. He is currently the head of international trade and finance at the law firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., and serves on the boards of numerous corporate, academic, religious, and public policy institutions. He is married to Frances Eizenstat and they have two married sons, Jay and Brian, and four grandchildren.