"Stuart Eizenstat tells an extraordinary story of human beings at their best, at their worst, and often in between. It is a personal account of his efforts through difficult and contentious international negotiations to achieve justice for victims of the Holocaust. This is an important book that I recommend to everyone seriously committed to the struggle for human rights."

--PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER

"Stuart Eizenstat, who was deeply involved at every level, gives a fascinating and illuminating account of the international negotiations that brought a measure of restitution to victims of the Nazi era."

--HENRY A. KISSINGER

In the second half of the 1990s, Stuart Eizenstat had perhaps the most controversial assignment of any U.S. foreign policy official in Europe. His mission had nothing to do with Russia, the Middle East, Yugoslavia, or any of the other hotspots of the day. Rather, Eizenstat’s mission was to provide justice--albeit belated and imperfect justice--for the victims of World War II, while maintaining positive diplomatic relations with the nations being asked to pay.

  Imperfect Justice is Stuart Eizenstat’s personal account of how the Holocaust became a political and diplomatic battleground fifty years after the war’s end, as the issues of dormant bank accounts, slave labor, confiscated property, looted art, and unpaid insurance policies convulsed Europe and America. His story is not one of easy successes or an idyllic view of justice. Rather, it is a revealing chronicle of high-stakes negotiations involving heads of European governments, played out on an international stage in an emotionally charged atmosphere, with a subtext of crimes against humanity and billions of dollars on the table...

FOREWORD BY ELIE WIESEL

Introduction: A Fifty-Year Wait for Justice

Through the Valley of the Dry Bones

Greta Beer and the Swiss Bank Affair

Enter the Players

Enter the Lawyers

All That Glitters

Kabuki Dance

Scorpions in a Bottle

The Settlement

The Barbarians of Culture

Remembering Dora-Mittelbau

As Old as the Pyramids

Ten Billion Marks

A Strange Ending

Unser Wien

Bridge over Troubled Water

The French Exception

Conclusion: A Final Accounting for World War II

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

PHOTO CREDITS

INDEX