My Great-Grandfather's Inheritance

I received a most thoughtful letter last week, addressed to me and my nineteen paternal cousins. It speaks for itself.

Dear S---,

Your great-grandfather Hugo F----- died in the Nazi Holocaust. Like millions of other Jews, he was rounded up and put in a concentration camp. Unlike death camps like Auschwitz, concentration camps didn’t have gas chambers. At concentration camps, the strategy of killing Jews was carried out more gradually, as prisoners were kept on starvation diets, forced to work long hours under intolerable conditions, and denied access to medical care. In the case of Hugo F-----, the strategy worked – he perished after about two years in the concentration camp in Maria-Theresienstadt, known also by its Czech name Terezin.

Like many Europeans in the 1930’s, Hugo F----- bought life insurance as a way of protecting his savings so he’d have something to pass on to his children. During that decade, banks failed, stocks lost value, and if you kept your money at home, it could be stolen or lost its value due to inflation. As persecution of the Jews skyrocketed in Austria in 1938 with the Nazi takeover, Jews had especially strong reason to put their savings into life insurance, since gangs and thugs could steal or destroy Jewish people’s property without being punished.

Because of how the Nazis seized and destroyed all the Jews’ property, Hugo F-----’s life insurance policies – the papers that gave him or his heirs a right to cash in – were lost. So after the war, nobody could make a claim on his life insurance. The same thing happened to thousands of other Jewish people and their descendents. The life insurance companies simply kept the money.

Late in the 1990’s pressure from activists fighting for justice for Holocaust victims forced many life insurance companies to agree to make good on life insurance policies that had been lost during the Holocaust. Aunt Sonia learned about that in a newspaper, and, with help from our uncle Heinz (Hans’s older brother) told the lawyers handling the case that we were Hugo F-----’s heirs, in case they could find any record of Hugo’s life insurance.

Sure enough, they did, and they determined that, with interest, his life insurance policy was worth a bit over $80,000, and that as one of Hans F-----’s grandchildren, your share is $1,043.14. (For those of you who like math, here’s how it works: the total is split 50-50 between Hugo’s sons Heinz and Hans. Hans said in his will that he wanted what he had to be distributed with 50% going to his children and 50% to his grandchildren, of which there are 20. Make sense?)

So, thanks to the love and forethought of your great-grandfather Hugo, and thanks to the generosity of your grandfather Hans, and thanks to the lawyers and activists who fought for justice for Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and thanks to your Aunt Sonia for doing the paperwork, here is your share of your great-grandfather’s life insurance proceeds.

Affectionately, your Dad,

Peter G. F-----
Personal Representative, Estate of Hans G. F-----

I don't know yet what I'll do with the money.