Miami Holocaust survivors are asking the U.S. Senate to help recoup payouts of murdered relatives from private European insurance companies, the Miami Herald reports.
"My parents, my four brothers, my sister, and grandparents were all murdered in Auschwitz," David Mermelstein, 90, president of the Holocaust Survivors of Miami-Dade County, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in emotional testimony Tuesday. "I am the only member of my family to survive."
Survivors like Mermelstein have not been able to get a payout because documentation was destroyed during the Holocaust, per the N.Y. Post.
Mermelstein is pushing to get a law passed that would allow survivors to use the U.S. court system to force the private insurance companies to look through their own records and pay out the money owed.
Unclaimed insurance contracts are reportedly worth between $2 billion and $25 billion, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Services.
"Without action by Congress, the insurance companies will be the heirs of the victims of the Holocaust," said Mermelstein, who was 16 when he was sent to Auschwitz.
"This is unacceptable. There should be no legal peace for the companies until the Holocaust survivors have moral peace."
Sin. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., seemed open to the idea of a bill, according to the Herald.
"If you believe there's up to $25 billion in uncompensated claims owed and the current system has generated $700 million, then somebody needs to look at something else," said Graham, the head of the Judiciary Committee.
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