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| Belgian Holocaust survivor to sue Monaco
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Monaco never made any restitution to Holocaust victims or to their relatives.
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A Jewish Belgian whose relatives were deported from Monaco in 1944 is preparing to sue the principality.
Jean Geismar, 75, from the Belgian town of Ottignies has been fighting for the past 10 years for Monaco to recognize its involvement in the deportation of Jews and of his uncle and aunt. In January he will launch a law suit against the Monaco government.
"In 1995, in the times when more and more nations where recognizing their involvement in the Holocaust, I started looking for more information about my family that fled Belgium to France and Monaco," Geismar told EJP.
"If France recognized its implication in my family’s deportation and it owed me 138,000 euros, Monaco still is deaf to my requests and still does not recognize its role in the deportation of Jews," Geismar said. "Though, I am not fighting for money but rather for the recognition," he added.
"Monaco is responsible for the deportation of more than 200 Jews. These Jews, and among them my uncle and my aunt were arrested by the Monaco police."
Killed at Auschwitz
Albert Samdam and Alice Goughengheim, Geismar’s relatives, left Belgium after the German invasion in 1941. Before they arrived in Monaco, they sold a building for the equivalent of 1.4 million euros (1.4 million Belgium francs then).
In March 1944, after three years of residency in Monaco, they were arrested and sent to Drancy, the French transit camp. From there, they were sent to Auschwitz and never came back.
In Drancy, the police chief notified in an official document, which is now on display in the Shoah Museum in Paris, which shows that the couple was in possession of various valuable objects and receipts from a Monaco bank. A list was established detailing the different stocks and accounts deposited in Monaco.
"However, neither the authorities nor the bankers want to recognize these official documents," Geismar said.
Geismar is stubborn and intends to fight for his relatives and Jews in general because, as he puts it, "the collective and moral damage will remain until justice would be done."
He will lodge a complaint in January in Nice and Monaco and he hopes that the principality will have a new stance on the matter with the new leadership of Albert the Second.
Monaco officials react
During the Italian occupation of Monaco, which occurred between 1940 and 1943, Jews were able to live in the principality without the fear of being deported. However, when Germany from occupied the city in the last two years of WWII, the Third Reich saw Monaco as a "friendly state" and the local police arrested over 200 Jews, according to Paris Shoah Museum.
Contacted by EJP, the attorney general's office of Monaco declined to react on the matter. "We reply to every letter we get and I must tell you that I am shocked that this gentleman never got anything from us," a representative of the attorney general said.
"I can not give you any information because I am not aware of such an affair. We wait for Jean Geismar to lodge his complaint and then we will deal with it," she said.
Monaco’s Treasury department confirmed to EJP, that the principality never made any restitution to Holocaust victims or to their relatives.
"Between 1997 and 2001, an investigation was conducted in banking institutions as requested by Geismar and we did not find any trace of the spoliated money," Monaco officials said on Thursday.
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