Victim's Fortune

Two reporters from the Financial Times go behind the scenes to detail both nobility and corruption in the fight for compensation of Holocaust survivors. Half a century after World War II, a small group of Americans launched a campaign to confront the world with the fact that many assets looted by the Nazis had never been returned to their owners. They wanted to write the final chapter in the story of the Holocaust's survivors, most of whom were nearing death, and wanted recognition of the debt that these victims were owed. Backed by class action lawsuits and threats of economic sanctions, a disparate group of lawyers, politicians, and Jewish advocacy groups mounted an enormous challenge against some of the world's largest corporations and governments to demand what they felt was due. After several years, they won a historic settlement of 5 billion dollars in reparations. But what began as a moral crusade had degenerated into a bare-knuckled battle that opened up painful debates across the world and within the Jewish community over justice and how to achieve it. In The Victim's Fortune, John Authers and Richard Wolffe offer a spellbinding investigative account of this international struggle -- an extraordinary political drama which unfolds against the backdrop of the twentieth century's most devastating crime.