M. and his family were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in early 1944. His father died in another camp, his mother's fate is unknown. M. survived two concentration camps. He remembered his father burying family documents in a 3 foot deep hole under the shed behind their home in Hungarian Slovakia, before their deportation.

At their arrival in Auschwitz-Birkeneau, the prisoners were divided into three groups: Women and small children went into one, children and elderly men in a second, and men between 16 and 45 in a third. "My father and brothers went into the third group. My grandmother, aunts and other relatives in the first, and my mother and myself in the second group," M. remembered. After changing his group, M. together with his father and brothers were lead away to a barracks, where their heads were shaved, their clothes taken, and they were given showers, deloused and handed black and white uniforms. The next day, they received a blue tattoo with a number on their left arm, M. himself B-14662. 

When the Soviet Army neared in February 1945, the camp was evacuated, and the prisoners were shipped to the camp of Dachau. On April 11, 1945, the U.S. Sixth Armored Division liberated the inmates. M. returned to his hometown of Sobrance, but found his house pillaged and the shed torn down. The buried cache, probably including insurance policies, was never found. He had no idea what had happened to its belongings. Later on, M. immigrated into the USA and went into television, where he worked as a sports editor for ABC's "Wide World of Sports". In Florida, M. led an organization of Jewish child survivors.

In 1998, the International Commission on Holocaust-Era Insurance Claims, or ICHEIC, was set up under the chairmanship of the American statesman Lawrence Eagleburger. The purpose of the Commission was to resolve unpaid Nazi-era insurance claims for survivors of the Holocaust. In August 2000, M. and five other Holocaust survivors filed a claim against Assicurazioni Generali. That is the Italian insurance company M. believes issued policies to his father and uncles for which he would be the heir. M. said he had no idea how much insurance was bought by his father, who owned a general store and two properties. He remembered, however, that his parents talked about insurance.

In 2005 Eagleburger announced that the ICHEIC had paid US$ 234 million to nearly 16,800 people. Some 27,000 others were told their claims could not immediately be validated, but were given US$1,000 each from a humanitarian fund. Among the latter group was M., who said he accepted a US$1,000 check in 2004 on the understanding Generali was continuing to research his claim. In the years prior to this there had been some controversy about the Commission, including reports that it was over-budgeted and too slow, and that insurance companies which had previously agreed to work with the ICHEIC had failed to disclose policyholder lists. 

In 2006, a Hungarian government program offeried compensation based on the number of Jewish family members killed in the Holocaust. The Hungarian ambassador in Washington received a letter from six survivors who criticized that this reparations program would pay Hungarian survivors $1,800 for each Hungarian parent or sibling killed in the Holocaust. The letter said that “the victims do not want to be remembered in the history books as the greedy survivors who accepted the killing of their parents and siblings for any amount.” The lead author of the letter was M., who said he had not had misgivings about taking funds from past restitution and reparations programs; he was one of the leaders of the effort to win reparations in the Hungarian Gold Train case involving claims that American troops looted stolen property after the war. When M. was originally contacted by the the new Hungarian program, he said he would take the money rather than leave it to the Hungarian government. M. would be eligible for $7,200. But afterwards, M. said he reconsidered his attitude as he thought more about the ramifications of taking the money.

M. said that he and the other signatories to the letter were not looking for the program to be totally scrapped. Instead they wanted to see it redesigned so that it provides compensation for the lost childhood of the survivors, or for their suffering as orphans - but not for any lives lost. They also wanted the Hungarian government to provide an apology for the role of Hungarian officials in the deportation of the country’s 400,000 Jews. 

Anschrift / Address: 

Werke / Works: 

Literatur / Writings: 

Literatur im Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek / Writings in the catalogue of Deutsche Nationalbibliothek : Alex Moskcovits    

Letzte Änderung / Last update: 26.06.2008 

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