61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

(11. Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz) of 25 November 1941 mandated the
complete expropriation of the German Jews. All property owned by Jews who
were expelled from Germany as part of the mass deportations now under way,
automatically devolved upon the German state. This included all life insurance
policy claims. It is notable that the German authorities only claimed the
payment of the redemption value and not the (generally far higher) endowment
or death value, probably because the latter would have been a clear indication
of the systematic murder of the deported Jews. Banks and insurance companies
were required to register the names of such clients with the authorities; in
practice, however, it was not an easy task to distinguish between Jewish and
non-Jewish policyholders or determine the nationality of Jews who had already
fled. All the companies protested against the requirement to register Jewish
policies; however, their complaints focussed not on the flagrant violation of the
law, but on the organisational problems and costs associated with this measure.
Precisely for these practical reasons, however, the interpretation of the
Ordinance left some scope for discretion: Rentenanstalt does not appear to have
registered any clients (but it registered 306 policies under the Registration of
Enemy Assets Order («Feindvermögensanmeldung») of 15 January 1940), whereas
other companies (Basler Leben, Vita and Winterthur Leben) complied with the
German request relatively promptly. By the end of the war, at least 846 policies
with a total repurchase value of 6.8 million Swiss francs had been surrendered
to the German fiscal authorities. The substantial differences between the
individual companies confirm that there was some freedom of action: about
90% of the confiscations carried out involved policies with Basler Leben, which
confiscated and paid out on the same number of policies – but not necessarily
the same policies – which it had registered. At the other end of the spectrum
was Rentenanstalt, which surrendered just 15% of the registered policies; the
figure for Winterthur Leben is 30%, and 40% for Vita.
Did the policyholders have any further claims on the insurance companies
which had paid out their policies to the German authorities? The USA was the
only country to examine this issue during the war years. In 1943, in the case of
Kleve and Warisch vs. Basler Leben, the New York Supreme Court concluded
that the insurance company was not responsible for the settlement of the claim
if it had paid out the policy in accordance with German law. The Court held
that it was immaterial that the German laws could be viewed as immoral:
«As for the very obnoxious and offensive character of the German ordinances,
the court is obliged to hold that governing law no less applies because it is
bad law […] we cannot undo or set to naught what has been done by the
German Government with the assets of the parties in Germany». 16
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