"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
