Eliminationist antisemitism may have been the main reason behind the Nazis’ lethal assault on European Jews, but there was also a profit motive: for some, the Holocaust was an opportunity for economic exploitation. This is the story of a small band of American lawyers who, 50 years after the fact, exposed the widespread complicity of major Swiss banks and multi-national German corporations in the Holocaust. Among the lawyers involved in this long-overdue attempt at Wiedergutmachung was William Lerach, a leading securities lawyer in the U.S. In this lecture, Lerach discusses the litigations that recovered stolen property worth several billion dollars. Besides his involvement in some of the largest law suits in recent years, he has pursued numerous high-profile human rights litigations, including suits for laborers in Saipan’s garment factories, American WW II POWs forced to work in Japanese weapons factories, and victims of the Holocaust. A member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, Lerach is the recipient of the prestigious Legacy Laureate award from the University of Pittsburgh. Patrick Patterson, a professor of history at UC San Diego, will provide an introduction and comments.

• 2018-01-17

• Lerach, William S.

• Tauber, Gayle
• Tauber, Philip

• Lerach, William S.
• Meili, Michel Christopher

• Aftermath of the Holocaust
• Class action lawsuits
• Federal Act on Banks and Savings Banks (Switzerland)
• Forced labor
• Holocaust reparations
• Nazi plunder
• Slave labor
• Swiss banks and banking
• Wiedergutmachung

• text
• video

• English

• UC Regents

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2023-01-20