Stuart Eizenstat already had plenty to do as U.S. ambassador to the European Union in 1995 when Richard Holbrooke, then assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, asked him to take on a new project. Holbrooke wanted Eizenstat to help Jewish groups trying to reclaim European real estate that had been taken from them during the Holocaust.
Eizenstat soon realized that the job would go well beyond that assignment. "I read an article about dormant Swiss bank accounts set up by Jews fleeing Nazi oppression," says Eizenstat, now 70. "After the war, they or their beneficiaries went back to reclaim those accounts, only to be told that the accounts didn't exist."
