Bill Nelson: “Last month I chaired a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to consider a difficult but extremely important…”

“Last month I chaired a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to consider a difficult but extremely important issue--compensating Holocaust survivors and their heirs for the value of Holocaust-era insurance policies they held before the war but lost or had stolen from them by the Nazi regime. Although this hearing was the first time a Senate committee had met specifically to consider Holocaust-era insurance compensation issues, I have been involved in the issue for more than a decade. As Florida's insurance commissioner in the late 1990's, I helped lead an international effort by regulators and Jewish groups that ultimately forced many European insurers to come to the table and for the first time begin paying restitution to survivors. Florida is a State with a large population of Holocaust survivors--one of the largest concentrations of Holocaust survivors in the world. Most are in their 80s or 90s. The very youngest are in their 70s. They are valued constituents, and while I recognize that no amount of financial compensation or property restitution can ever make up for the indescribable wrong of the Holocaust, I have been and remain committed to doing what I can to assist survivors to obtain without delay meaningful compensation for assets that they lost during the war.”