The
ICHEIC potential policyholder list is available at www1.yadvashem.org/pheip/
Please
note: ICHEIC's claims filing deadline of December 31, 2003
has passed, as has the late filing deadline of March 31, 2004
for accepting claim forms requested by December 31, 2003.
Since ICHEIC is not accepting any new claims or claims information,
and already incorporates into its own internal research work
all information provided by the list of potential Holocaust
era policyholders previously published by ICHEIC, that list
is no longer available on this website.
ICHEIC
does recognize however that individuals may be interested
in accessing the list for research purposes, and that such
interest is likely to exist far beyond the lifespan of ICHEIC.
For this reason, ICHEIC has worked with Yad Vashem to make
the list publicly available for research purposes. The list
can be accessed through Yad Vashem's website at www1.yadvashem.org/pheip/.
In 1999,
ICHEIC initiated the most extensive project ever conducted
to investigate and record information on insurance policies
from Holocaust-era archives from around the world. ICHEIC
has been largely successful in acquiring lists of policyholders
from participating insurance companies, which have been matched
against an existing database of Holocaust victims in Israel
(Yad Vashem). The ICHEIC lists include more than 500,000 policyholder
or policyholder-related names. In April of 2003, ICHEIC published
a list of more than 360,000 German Jewish policyholders. This
resulted from an unprecedented cooperative effort involving
ICHEIC, the German Insurance Association and the German Foundation.
These combined efforts have yielded substantial information
regarding thousands of insurance policies in effect prior
to and during World War II. This information was made available
to ICHEIC claimants during the claims filing period, potentially
providing them with additional evidence to support their claims.
Claimants
who filed with ICHEIC based on this list should understand
that the fact that a name appeared on the published list is
not a guarantee that the individual named or his or her heirs
or beneficiaries are entitled to payment. These lists
were compiled from insurance companies, insurance associations,
various public archives and other sources. Names found here
were those of individuals most likely to have had a life insurance
policy of any kind (including education, dowry, endowment
or pension/annuity policies) during the relevant period (1920-1945)
and who are thought likely to have suffered any form of racial,
religious or political persecution during the Holocaust. An
insurance company's investigation of a claim (where a claimant
found a name on the website and filed a claim with ICHEIC
during the claims filing period) may reveal that the claim
was previously completely settled or paid -- which according
to ICHEIC guidelines precludes this claim from being reconsidered.
Additionally, there may be instances where policies were issued
to individuals with common names that multiple claimants might
mistake as the holder of their particular policy.
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