Survivors Sue Claims Commission

By Matthew E. Berger
Published on October 2, 2003

Survivors are suing the commission on Nazi-era insurance claims, a commissioner has called for the resignation of its chief and Jewish officials handling the claims acknowledge serious problems.

But they also say there probably isn't a better way to dole out the claims.

The anger and frustration some lawmakers and survivors feel toward the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims peaked last week when several survivors filed suit, claiming the organization was delaying payments.

California's insurance commissioner, John Garamendi, a member of the commission, later joined the suit and called for the resignation of the commission's chairman, former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger.

Renegade Robbins

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on October 25, 2001

Tim Robbins spied "Mephisto," the Nazi-era play based on Klaus Mann's 1936 novel about an actor who pandered to the Nazis to advance his career, while rifling through a box of books on his way out of an English-language bookstore in Paris last March. The actor-writer-activist, then on location with Jonathan Demme's film, "The Truth About Charlie," was searching for plays to direct at the Actors' Gang, the boldly original Los Angeles troupe he'd co-founded with UCLA peers in 1981.