Allianz Golf Tournament Protester Arrested, Insurance Company Refuses To Pay Holocaust Survivors Claims

German insurance companies refuse to release policy holder lists or pay claims, leaving elderly Holocaust survivors whose families bought life insurance on the hook

German insurance giant Allianz, A.G., refuses to pay claims to Jewish families who hold paid-in-full Holocaust era life insurance policies to this very day.

This past weekend, the PGA Senior Tour event sponsored by Allianz attracted unusual attention on the ground, and in the air.

"I bought a ticket to the event and was merely exercising my free speech rights to show how unfair it is that Allianz is prospering, but so many survivors are living in poverty," said Dr. Jay Lieberman who was arrested, who is himself, the son of Holocaust survivors.

The Doctor stands accused of trespassing at the Allianz golf event.

On Sunday, February 7, a banner flown from a plane boldly proclaimed: "Allianz Owes Holocaust Survivors $2.5 Billion" while Holocaust survivors, their children and grandchildren and many strong supporters demonstrated outside the Allianz Championship Golf Tournament held in Boca Raton's Broken Sound Country Club.

During the Holocaust, millions of Jews were deported and ultimately killed in work camps and death camps. This left little ability to preserve and maintain policy paperwork, when entire families with multiple generations were involuntarily incarcerated. Allianz has already confirmed publicly that they insured Nazi death camps and Jewish ghettos, and Nazi factories, motor pools and barracks.

The South Florida community of Boca Raton and neighboring Boynton Beach has over 100,000 residents of Jewish descent, which makes the choice of venues even more exasperating to the protesters. The Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA is a coalition of elected survivor leaders from New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Las Vegas, Connecticut, Washington DC, and South Florida, which has organized the protest this past weekend, and does a lot more than fighting insurance companies on behalf of many Holocaust survivors.

Many of the aggrieved policy holders and HSF members live in South Florida, but some are as far flung as Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Boston, Las Vegas and Virginia - and that's just the 's executive committee, many of whom are not policy holders, but all of whom survived Nazi terror.

Allianz's unpaid policy holders span the globe.

Multiple organizations have been pursuing relief and racing the clock as an aging population of holocaust survivors and their families seek to beat the clock to gain relief during the lifetime of the afflicted, fully half of whom are destitute.

These aren't protesters and claimants seeking reparations or handouts, but regular people whose insurance contracts have been nearly impossible to enforce for decades, requiring diplomatic, legal and political pursuit at the highest levels.

In 1998 the insurance industry formed an "International Commission" whose announced purpose was to voluntarily publish the names of the insured and resolve claims on a "voluntary basis" which led to payment of 3% of the total amount estimated owed by European insurance companies after 9 long years. Allianz AG participated and paid a total of roughly $29 Million in claims of the estimated $2.5 Billion owed to policy holders. Separately, Allianz made large contributions to Jewish groups high minded names such as the "American Jewish Committee" and the "Jewish Foundation for the Righteous" whose members were unaffected directly by Nazi Genocide and are not survivors organizations.

Allianz pursued these groups in the interest of laundering their brand name, but now the law backs them up.

Huffpost Live covered the 2013 protest of the Allianz Golf Championship with a studio interview of Holocaust survivor Ivar Segalowitz who's been unable to pursue his claims. He was 11 years old when his family was deported to a concentration camp, leaving him unable to even determine if his family was covered by a policy. However, he said then that his family lived a typical upper middle class lifestyle and he was certain that members of his extended family or parents would've carried such insurance.

Allianz, AG refuses all requests to make rosters of policy holders known.

Mr. Segalowitz succumbed to cancer in 2014 having never received information from Allianz.

Ivar Segalowitz was the arrested Dr. Lieberman's father-in-law.

"Most of my father's family was murdered in Treblinka. My father-in-law Ivar Segalowitz was the sole survivor of a wealthy Lithuanian family. He survived Dachau, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Buchenwald, and served in the U.S. military after emigrating to this country," said Dr. Lieberman, "Despite his mother, grandmother, aunt, and uncle's names listed among German insurance holders, U.S. law barred him from going to court to reclaim his family legacy."

"A US court ruling effectively placed policy holders into circumstances where an Act of Congress has become their last resort to open the courthouse doors. Not to gain repayment, but solely to allow a court to hear the cases of these policyholders," says the Doctor.

As if to underscore the huge monumental barriers facing victims' families pursuing political nature of these remaining claims, Dr. Lieberman says that, "Ivar's daughter, Genie Lieberman, testified about Ivar in Congress before Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Ted Deutch in 2014." Since then, intense lobbying by the current Administration in the White House, the insurance industry and groups benefiting from the status quo have combined to stalemate the survivors' efforts.

Meanwhile, the German insurance giant Allianz continues to host golf tournaments and dominates the trip insurance industry. Few of its customers realize that the company and its affiliates grew wealthy insuring Nazi Germany, but refuse to honor policies of Jewish families. Allianz also tried to sponsor the New Meadowlands Stadium outside New York in 2008 causing an uproar for the very same reasons.

The Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA has compiled a list of four demands its protesters for relief from Allianz:

1. Publish the names of all Allianz and affiliates' insurance policy holders between 1920 and 1945 on the internet.
   
2. Publish all insurance records of Nazi German institutions including, the SS, concentration and death camp, and personnel and all other war related business between 1933 and 1945.
   
3. Immediately cease any lobbying against Holocaust survivors and heirs to bring legal action in U.S. courts.
   
4. Disgorge2.5 billion, representing its unjust enrichment from unpaid insurance policies from the Holocaust, to be paid to beneficiaries and heirs and to fund social services for Holocaust survivors in need worldwide.

Further factual information was provided to the Huffington Post by the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA in 2013.

According to data provided to Congress, a total of over $21 billion in today's value remains unpaid from all insurers, including not only Allianz, but Italy's Generali, AXA of France, and others.

Despite legislation with a bipartisan group of 115 co-sponsors in 2012 that passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously, the measure never made it to the floor of the full House. Allianz, Generali, the Dutch Insurance Association, the American Insurance Association, Zurich, ING, and Swiss Re all lobbied against the legislation. Particularly anguishing to survivors and their families was the opposition from the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, Bnai Brith International, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the World Jewish Congress, and the World Jewish Restitution Organization.

Meanwhile, Dr. Lieberman must go to court in March on misdemeanor charges for speaking out, while ironically the numerous survivors await their day in court, if Congress finally goes through with a long delayed bill just to open the courthouse doors.

If they ever get their day in court.

Meanwhile, Allianz Group earned $11.7 Billion dollars in 2014 - the lastest year for which we have figures - and served 85,000,000 customers who have little clue that their insurer grew rich denying legitimate policy holder claims, when Holocaust survivors needed that insurance the most.