Stuart E. Eizenstat was born on January 15, 1943 in Chicago and raised in Atlanta; he was an all-city and honorable-mention All-America basketball player in high school. He earned an A.B., cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was a brother of the Alpha Pi chapter of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity. He received his Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1967.
Ambassador Eizenstat's Extensive Work on Holocaust Restitution
He has devoted much effort to various aspects of Holocaust Restitution. This has included partial recompense for Slave and Forced Labor, and most recently in 2018 for the trauma suffered by Kindertransport. It has also included restitution of Holocaust Era Assets to their original owners or their heirs. Initially he did this as President Clinton's "Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State on Holocaust-Era Issues." In this position, he took an important leadership role for many nations. He has continued this role as a private citizen. This had been preceded by his work under President Carter. In 1998, he organized the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, resulting in the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. He successfully negotiated major agreements with the Swiss, Germans, Austrian and French, and other European countries. This importantly concerned Slave and Forced Labor. It also included life insurance policy payments to heirs of victims of the Nazi Holocaust; and Holocaust Victim Bank Account assets. It also included the return of art-works to their original owners, or their heirs, which had been looted by the Nazis. One such art-work is Gustav Klimt's "Lady in Gold" which was returned to Maria Altmann. Ambassador Eizenstat has acted on many occasions as a negotiator to gain payments by the current German Government to various other classes of Holocaust Survivors, or their heirs. Most recently, in 2018, he helped negotiate a symbolic payment of 2,500 Euros to those who had survived the Holocaust by having escaped it by the Kindertransport program, which had been assisted by the British Government. All parties involved agree that there is no way to "make good" to these Holocaust Survivors for the trauma they had suffered, often as very young children, when they had been separated from their parents in 1938 or 1939. Also, their extra trauma when, in 1945 or even later, nearly all of them had discovered that their parents had been murdered by the Nazis - yet this symbolic payment is an important form of official recognition for the extreme trauma they had suffered due to the Nazi Holocaust. This statement similarly applies to the symbolic payment of 2,500 Euros to Child Holocaust Survivors, negotiated by Child Survivors in 2014 - it too cannot "make good," but it is an official recognition. In fact, for any personal victimization no restitution scheme can make good - but for most of these victimizations the German Government has provided monthly continuing significant Restitution. In general, the German Government has attempted to make meaningful, if partial, restitution. Ambassador Eizenstat has written about his earlier Restitution efforts in his 2009 book Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II. This has been translated into German, French, Czech and Hebrew. In 2013 Ambassador Eizenstat was appointed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as "Special Advisor for Holocaust Issues." As of 2017, he has remained in this position.
Personal life
He was married to the late Frances Eizenstat, and has two sons and eight grandchildren.
