ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, November 6, 1996 TAG: 9611060028
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: ROB WELLS ASSOCIATED PRESS
GRETA BEER found her father's finances cloaked in secrecy. But details of his 50-plus-year-old account have made the news.
For Greta Beer, the hunt for her late father's fortune, missing from a Swiss bank since the turbulent World War II years, is becoming more traumatic with time.
A Swiss envoy last week cited her case as an example of the difficulty in searching for accounts of at least 1,000 European Jews and refugees who put money in Swiss banks for safekeeping during the war.
Swiss bankers found the account of Beer's father, said the envoy, Carlo Jagmetti, ``but they discovered her uncles had taken everything in the past.''
Beer was flabbergasted.
No one had given her evidence showing an uncle or other family member had access to her father's money. What's more, she was outraged to hear her financial history discussed in public.
``I'm absolutely, terribly upset,'' she said in an interview this week. ``I find this a slander and a defamation of character.''
A prominent Swiss banker now says the tale about her uncles may be nothing more than rumor.
The Swiss banks say they have found about $32 million in unclaimed assets. Jewish groups say $7 billion is missing.
Beer fled the Nazis in Romania during the war and the communists afterward. Her father, Siegfried Deligdisch, and his brother, Bernard, were partners in a large textile mill.
With the Nazis advancing, her father opened a Swiss bank account, but Beer doesn't have records of the account or the bank's name. Deligdisch died of kidney disease in 1940.
Beer moved to New York in 1951 and became a U.S. citizen five years later.
During the 1960s, after the Swiss government passed a law allowing the recovery of Jewish accounts, Beer, her brother and late mother began searching.
Beer and her mother, who has since died, tried unsuccessfully to find an account under the name of Deligdisch.
The case gained the attention of Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., after she spoke to his Senate Banking Committee in April.
At the hearing, Hans Baer, a senior official in the Swiss Bankers Association, invited her to Switzerland to search. She flew to Zurich last July.
Baer said she first raised the possibility her uncle had access to her father's account, a suggestion she denies.
``When she was here, she said her uncle was able to retrieve his money from his bank,'' the banker said. ``I said, `Wonderful! Why don't you tell us where that is?' She said, `I don't know.'''
Beer said her uncle's financial affairs were separate and have ``no bearing on my father's account.''
In late September, a Swiss banking source told reporters new information had surfaced about Beer's account. Research showed an uncle had access to the account and had taken it, but no further details were provided.
Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, cited those rumors at a news conference in late October as an example of claimants' problems.
Jagmetti, the Swiss ambassador to Washington, then learned of Beer's story from the Bronfman briefing and believed the case was public knowledge, said David Vogelsanger, political affairs director at the Swiss Embassy.
``The ambassador had repeated something that he had read. We do not want to exploit this case. We simply want to point out that each case is individual and each case is difficult,'' Vogelsanger said.
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Greta Beer poses in front of the Swiss Bank Corp.by CNBbuilding in New York. color.