Claims Conference - Criticism

Criticism

The Claims Conference has been criticised recently both for its high staff salaries and of its priorities.

On May 19, 2006, the Jewish Chronicle revealed that the Claims Conference highest-paid official, executive vice-president Gideon Taylor, was awarded $437,811 (£240,000) in salary and pension (2004 numbers). An advisor to British survivors in compensation claims in the 1990s, Dr Pinto-Duschinsky, commented: "It is wrong for the executive vice-president to earn annually the same as the compensation for several hundred former slave labourers. The moral authority of the leading Jewish organisations is gravely weakened by excessively high salaries for top officials."

One of the most outspoken critics of the Claims Conference is Isi Leibler, the former chairman of the Governing Board of the World Jewish Congress, who cites allegations of incompetence, impropriety and cover-ups as well as the absence of an independent review board, bureaucratization and a domination by a small clique.

In an article of the Jerusalem Post he says that "the richest Jewish foundation in the world, has still failed to provide adequate financial assistance to elderly and sick Holocaust survivors who live in abject poverty in the twilight of their lives. An organization which boasts that it currently holds in trust $900 million in assets, yet fails to rectify such a condition, must be held accountable for one of the greatest scandals in contemporary Jewish life."

The priorities of the organization have also been criticised. Among the critics is the Claims Conference own treasurer, Roman Kent, a Holocaust survivor, who told the The Jewish Chronicle: "Survivors are suffering. Our only priority should be the survivors, and everything else should be secondary. We are spending money for thousands of projects, but the health of the survivors can't wait. They are dying daily." "I'm not saying that these are bad programmes, but they can wait - or else they should be the responsibility of the world Jewish community, not the Claims Conference.

In a 2006 investigative report, it was claimed the organization, while having $1.7 billion in its accounts, finances welfare assistance for only 9,000 survivors while "tens of millions of dollars each year" are spent on management expenses with the balance going largely to organisations having little to do with the Holocaust or its survivors.

Amidst this mounting criticism, the office of Germany's independent federal auditor announced it was considering an investigation of the Claims Conference in June 2008.