http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/12/business/insure.php ]

Survivors of the Holocaust and their relatives, who have been fighting to compel European insurance companies to pay death benefits for victims of the Nazis, are getting a break from a big Italian insurance company, according to lawyers for the insurer and policyholders.

As part of a proposed class-action settlement, the company, Assicurazoni Generali, on Sunday agreed to give heirs of Holocaust victims another 18 months to uncover documentation on unpaid life insurance policies at long- sealed Nazi archives in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

Representatives of several countries, including the United States, have been pushing to open the archives since May.

"This adds another motivation and a very concrete one to get the archives opened right now," Paul Shapiro, an executive of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, said of the deadline extension.

Staff technicians at the archives were to meet Monday to discuss progress on scanning more than 50 million pages of Nazi and Allied records of the period. The documents include reports on the arrest and transfer of millions of people to concentration camps as well as on hundreds of thousands of deaths.

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The deadline extension came at the behest of a U.S. judge in New York who is conducting hearings on the fairness of a settlement reached by Generali and class-action lawyers last fall.

The concession by Generali suggested a desire to close a long, painful chapter in which the company has been persistently accused of abusing the trust of Jewish policyholders. Generali has insisted that it was never a company policy to reject any valid claim or require survivors of Holocaust victims to produce death certificates and copies of policies in order to collect benefits.

At the same time, it has refused to give survivors access to its Holocaust- era records or to publish full lists of policyholders from that period that might help relatives in filing claims.

Yet for Generali, the accommodation on the German archives may not have been a major concession. Lawyers for Generali said there was little chance that useful insurance data would be found among the documents. Holocaust specialists say they do not know what is in the documents, but Shapiro said the heirs of victims "should have the right to explore every possibility."

The issue of the archives, among the most extensive and varied ever compiled, was raised at a hearing in U.S. District Court in New York on Jan. 31 by Samuel Dubbin, a Miami lawyer who opposes the settlement on several grounds, including that potential payments to policyholders are inadequate and that the settlement has not been sufficiently publicized to ensure full participation. Dubbin represents a separate group of heirs not taking part in the class action.

Judge George Daniels, who gave preliminary approval of the agreement in October, had called the hearing to listen to objections and determine, finally, whether the deal was fair and reasonable.

After listening to Dubbin argue for delaying the settlement and interrupting frequently with questions, Daniels halted the hearing and called the lawyers who drafted the agreement into his chambers.

After a discussion, he returned to the bench and, without explanation, abruptly adjourned the hearing.

Court papers filed Friday suggested that the judge had urged that the agreement be modified so that material from the archive could be considered.

In the filing, the insurance company said that "out of respect to Generali's former insureds or beneficiaries who may have been Holocaust victims, and their heirs, Generali wishes to provide reasonable additional time" for considering material from the archives.

The agreement opens a window of 18 months. If the archives open by January 2008, survivors will have six months to file new claims. After that, the period for filing claims shrinks each month until Aug. 31, 2008, when no more claims will be considered. Before the change, the deadline for claims had been March 31, 2007.

On Thursday, lawyers on both sides outlined the changes to Daniels, who issued an order to resume the hearing Feb. 27.

Robert Swift, one of the class-action lawyers, referred to the extension of time as "a good-faith effort to try to bridge a concern."

Dubbin said he thought the change improved the agreement, but that it left "many problems unresolved." He said he would continue to oppose the settlement and, separately planned to continue appealing an earlier decision by a federal judge to dismiss the Holocaust insurance claims on several grounds.