Greta Beer (Q84600896)
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Jewish refugee born in Romania, immigrant to USA, became the face of Jewish refugees seeking to recover funds from Swiss bank accounts 1921-2020)
- Greta Georgia Beer
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Greta Beer |
Jewish refugee born in Romania, immigrant to USA, became the face of Jewish refugees seeking to recover funds from Swiss bank accounts 1921-2020) |
|
Statements
25 June 1921Gregorian
23 January 2020
1 reference
Greta Beer, a Romanian Jew whose decades-long search for her father’s Swiss bank account helped force banks in Switzerland to pay more than $1 billion in compensation to Holocaust victims and their heirs over lost assets, died on Jan. 23 at her home in Brighton, Mass. She was 98. (English)
1 reference
She spoke six languages—Romanian, German, Italian, French, Polish and English. That linguistic gift sustained her work as a tour guide in Washington, D.C., and New York. Her interests included opera, museums and literature. (English)
1 reference
Rebuffed by the banks, she pressed her fight and her testimony in Congress helped bring about a billion-dollar settlement over accounts of Holocaust victims that were long hidden. (English)
1 reference
Shortly before he died of a kidney ailment in 1940, Greta Beer’s father told the family there was no need to worry about money. The Jewish industrialist said he had deposited profits from his Romanian textile business in a Swiss bank.Ms. Beer spent much of her life trying to track down that money. After World War II, she and her mother went from bank to bank in Switzerland. At every bank, they were told there was no trace of her father’s money. Ms. Beer and others sued major Swiss banks in the 1990s. She testified during a 1996 U.S. Senate hearing on property taken from Holocaust victims.In 1998, Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion to settle claims from a class-action suit in a U.S. federal court over Holocaust-era deposits.No account was found for Ms. Beer’s family. She suspected records had been destroyed. In 2002, a U.S. federal judge overseeing the case awarded her $100,000 from the settlement fund for her service to other claimants.Stuart Eizenstat, who in the 1990s led a U.S. government campaign for the return of assets belonging to victims of Nazi persecution, said Ms. Beer was a catalyst for the 1998 settlement.In retirement, she lived on Social Security in Brighton, Mass. She died Jan. 23 at the age of 98. (English)
She was born Greta Deligdisch on June 25, 1921, in Cernăuti, Romania.Her father, Siegfried Deligdisch, owned a knitwear manufacturing and retailing business. The family said he frequently visited Switzerland, where he had a numbered account. Greta was sent to Swiss boarding schools.After her father’s death in 1940, the family sought to elude the worst forms of persecution by moving to Brașov, a Romanian city in the Carpathian Mountains, where they lived in an apartment owned by a friend. After the war, Greta decided to flee Soviet-occupied Romania. She reached Vienna after jumping off a train and being smuggled through Hungary in a truck carrying cigarettes.She married a physician, Simon Beer, and they lived in Italy before emigrating to the U.S. in the early 1950s. The couple had no children and eventually divorced. Ms. Beer is survived by a nephew.She spoke six languages—Romanian, German, Italian, French, Polish and English. That linguistic gift sustained her work as a tour guide in Washington, D.C., and New York. Her interests included opera, museums and literature. (English)
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Wikipedia(1 entry)
- enwiki Greta Beer