ATTENTION: Assignment Editors

06 March 2001
Contact: Janet Gilmore
(510) 642-5685

WHAT:
"Fifty Years in the Making: World War II Reparation and Restitution Claims," a forum that will focus on policy and legal issues arising from claims that governments and businesses in Europe and Asia profited from human rights violations during World War II.

Scholars, governmental officials and attorneys will join with prominent leaders in the center of the reparation debate to discuss claims for illegal takings; stolen art; unpaid insurance policies; and funds from dormant bank accounts.

This is the second annual Stefan Riesenfeld Symposium at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Law (Boalt Hall).

WHEN:
The conference begins Thursday, March 8, at 5:45 p.m. with a keynote speech and ends Friday, March 9, with a 6 p.m. closing address.

WHERE:
Booth Auditorium, Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley.

WHO:
Guest speakers will include:

* Ronald Bettauer, deputy legal advisor at the U.S. Department of State, who will give the keynote speech;
* H. E. Peter Moser, Austria's ambassador to the United States, who will give a 12:30- 2 p.m. luncheon address on Friday;
* Jacob Finci, president of the Jewish Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, who will give the closing address; and
* Arie Zuckerman, director of the Holocaust Restitution Unit, Office of the Prime Minister of Israel.

Consuls general from several countries also will attend.

BACKGROUND:
This symposium is in memory of Riesenfeld, a leading international law scholar who taught at Boalt Hall for more than 40 years. He died in 1999 at age 90. Riesenfeld was born in Germany and escaped Nazi Germany at age 26. He graduated from Boalt Hall and earned several other academic degrees. He worked for the U.S. Department of State and twice argued major cases before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

For more information on the symposium, visit http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/bjil