Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Chaos in the WJC
The characters in this melodrama suffer from sizable egos. Edgar Bronfman, who revived the WJC with his billions and finances some 25% of its $8million annual budget, is one of America's wealthiest businessmen-philanthropists and is used to getting his way. Singer, with a penchant for hyperbole, has run the organization since 1985. Liebler, an Australian tycoon ousted from the WJC power structure when he crossed political swords with Bronfman and Singer, is still seething.
The congress, an umbrella organization for Jewish groups in 86 nations, always has operated loosely. That was one of its strengths. Swiss bankers, who eventually had to cough up more than $1 billion to settle congress claims on behalf of Holocaust victims; French museums that had to return stolen Jewish-owned art, and most everybody else the group has taken on were convinced the stealthy WJC was a Jewish CIA with a huge staff.
Actually, WJC's headquarters in New York operates with fewer than a half-dozen full-timers. During research for "Pack of Thieves," my book about the search for Holocaust assets, I found that WJC superpublicist Elan Steinberg kept a cache of hitherto secret documents not in locked files but in a bunch of cartons in a closet.
Unfortunately, such informality is now proving to be a weakness.
The congress, an umbrella organization for Jewish groups in 86 nations, always has operated loosely. That was one of its strengths. Swiss bankers, who eventually had to cough up more than $1 billion to settle congress claims on behalf of Holocaust victims; French museums that had to return stolen Jewish-owned art, and most everybody else the group has taken on were convinced the stealthy WJC was a Jewish CIA with a huge staff.
Actually, WJC's headquarters in New York operates with fewer than a half-dozen full-timers. During research for "Pack of Thieves," my book about the search for Holocaust assets, I found that WJC superpublicist Elan Steinberg kept a cache of hitherto secret documents not in locked files but in a bunch of cartons in a closet.
Unfortunately, such informality is now proving to be a weakness.
