‘COUNTER’ FOR JEWISH WAR POLICIES REMAINS OPEN FOR 5 MORE YEARS

Sjoa Foundation For Individual Insurance Claims (SIVS) has existed for 20 years and will remain open for five more years to deal with applications regarding robbed life insurance policies

In November 1999, the Central Jewish Board and the Association of Insurers in the Netherlands agreed on an arrangement for the settlement of life insurance and burial insurance policies that had been robbed from Jewish insured during the war by the occupier. Part of this arrangement was the establishment of the independent Stichting Individuele Verzekeringsaanspraken Sjoa (Sjoa Foundation For Individual Insurance Claims) for investigating and settling individual applications. Now, twenty years later, it can be concluded that the Foundation has satisfied a large demand. A total of more than 22,500 applications were submitted and over 14,000 payments have been made relating to 2,179 policies, involving a total amount of € 8.4 million. More than 97% of the applications have been settled. In 2014, in accordance with the 1999 arrangement, an amount of € 4.4 million was transferred to the Jewish communities in the Netherlands and Israel.

In 1999, it had been agreed that the Foundation would deal with applications until 1 January 2010. However, the Association of Insurers and the Central Jewish Board decided each time to continue the settlement of applications for five more years. There are two important reasons for this decision. The first was the international conviction that there should not be an end to the settlement of Jewish war claims. An appeal was made to insurers worldwide at the Holocaust Conference of 2009 in Prague to continue to deal with individual claims. The second reason was that it has become clear that there is still a need for answering questions regarding Dutch insurance policies from the Second World War.

However, as of 1 January 2020, the Foundation will no longer accept undocumented applications for settlement. This means that only applications will be settled that relate to a specific insurer or policy, or to a name that appears on the list of names published by the Foundation. In the past period, it has become clear that the settlement of undocumented applications – in which only a general request for investigation is made to all relevant companies – involves much time and very seldom leads to a positive result. Our website contains a list of about 2,000 names of insured whose policy was probably not settled or not completely settled. The Foundation will concentrate on this list and will possibly add names to it. In addition, it remains possible to submit applications that relate to a specific insurer or policy.

Despite the fact that the Foundation will still continue to deal with applications for five more years, it is undesirable to wait unnecessarily long with submitting an application. At the moment, Foundation still has sufficient capacity to settle applications within a reasonable period of time.