Credit Suisse demanded a death certificate for a banker killed at Majdanek; his daughter waited until 1998 for his account

Józef Sapir was a Jewish banker. Before the war he deposited family money with Credit Suisse in Geneva and named other Swiss banks to his daughter Estelle. She put the sum at $82,000 in 1940s value. Before his deportation he packed bonds, share certificates and cash into a small suitcase and sent it to his son Yehuda in France. Nazi records show Józef deported to Majdanek on 6 March 1943, and he was killed there. In 1946 Estelle went to Credit Suisse. Officials asked for his account number and his death certificate. "Hitler didn't give me a death certificate," she said in 1998. She said she could see her father's records on the officer's desk. She joined the class actions against Swiss banks with lawyer Edward Fagan. In May 1998 she settled with Credit Suisse, the first settlement approved by a federal court for a plaintiff in those suits. The amount was kept secret. She was 71, lived in one room in Queens, and said her weight had fallen to 65 pounds. On 12 August 1998 UBS and Credit Suisse agreed to pay $1.25 billion, of which $800 million was for dormant accounts. Judge Edward Korman approved it in July 2000. The Claims Resolution Tribunal in Zurich paid claims from 2001 and closed at the end of 2012. Estelle died on 13 April 1999. Yehuda kept the suitcase in Paris until he died in 1983; his widow could not cash its contents after 1989.