20,000 Have Called About Swiss Accounts

More than 20,000 people have called special claims offices for information about dormant Swiss bank accounts that may have belonged to Holocaust victims.

Five claims offices, all staffed by the international accountancy firm Ernst and Young, were set up on July 23 to handle inquiries following the worldwide publication of 2,000 names on dormant accounts from World War II.

The Swiss Bankers’ Association said Monday that the Basel office - which handles queries from western Europe - has been the busiest. There have been 9,212 phone calls and letters in just over two weeks, it said.

The New York center has had 7,013 requests, Tel Aviv received 2,496, Budapest had 883, and Sydney had 455.

While many of the 2,000 account holders are Jews who perished in the Nazi era, others are unconnected with the Holocaust. To the embarrassment of Swiss banks, a handful are suspected Nazis or collaborators.

People requesting information on a specific account can call a toll-free number to receive an information pack, available in 15 languages, on how to proceed.

The Swiss Bankers Association published the list of dormant accounts - in violation of its own strict secrecy rules - under international pressure to reveal more about missing Jewish assets.

Jewish groups accuse the banks of sitting on billions of dollars worth of funds looted from Jews by the Nazis or invested by Jews who were subsequently killed. The banks have so far identified about $40 million in dormant accounts from the World War II era, but say only a small amount of that is likely to be from Holocaust victims.