Zurich / Switzerland (RNC Agency) 30.08.1997

The president of Switzerland’s new Holocaust memorial fund on Friday rejected a call from a prominent Israeli activist that a world Jewish agency take over administration of the money.

Rolf Bloch, who chairs the Holocaust fund and is also president of the Swiss Jewish Federation (SIG), rejected the proposal from Avraham Burg, head of the Jewish Agency which coordinates global Jewish immigration to Israel. Burg had called for the fund of 270 million Swiss francs ($180 million) from Swiss banks, businesses and the central bank to be run the World Jewish Restitution Organisation (WJRO) to avoid a duplication of effort. ’’ This is not a very efficient way, to do the same thing in a new place and reinvent the wheel,’’ Burg told a news conference on Thursday in the Swiss city of Basle.

But Bloch said the fund’s board, which started working in July, was charged by the Swiss government with humanitarian aide to all categories of victims of Nazi persecution, no only Jews who survived the Holocaust. ’’ I don’t believe he can do this,’’ Bloch said about Burg’s proposal.’’ We have a specific procedure laid out in the statutes, ‘’ Bloch said on Swiss radio DRS.

The fund’s seven-person board also has three members each nominated by world Jewish groups and Swiss government, advised by large council including Jewish, Roma and Gay organisation. Roma and Gays were also targeted by Nazi extermination efforts. The board ’s first meeting in July approved the release of an initial 17 million Swiss francs ($11,5 million) in humanitarian aid to needy Holocaust survivors, primarily Jews in eastern Europe. But nothing has been paid out yet and a permanent secretariat is due to open only in September.

The memorial fund administers 170 million Swiss francs ($115 million) in donations from Swiss banks and private businesses eager to burnish neutral Switzerland’s humanitarian image amid accusations it cynically profited from World War Two.

The Swiss National Bank, which acknowledges it bought gold during wartime that it should have suspected was looted by the Nazis, also plans to contribute another 100 million francs.

The fund is separate from Swiss government’s plan to create a seven billion Swiss Franc ($4,7 billion) humanitarian foundation that would use sales of official gold reserves to help victims of poverty, disasters and human rights abuses.