Karen Heilig’s paternal grandfather, a Czechoslovakian lawyer, perished in a Nazi concentration camp in the Bohemian fortress town of Thereseinstadt.
     Heilig now fights for justice on behalf of Holocaust survivors worldwide, including 200,000 former slave laborers.
     The young Australian lawyer is an important and passionate player in negotiating history-making restitution settlements with many of the world’s most powerful corporations, among them Siemens, BMW, VW, Daimler Chrysler, BASF and Krupp, the Deutsche and Commerz banks, and insurance giants Axa, Generali, Allianz, Zurich and Winterthur.
     The German, Austrian, French, Italian and Swiss corporations involved are expected to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to atone for wartime wrongs.
     Heilig is the director of special projects and assistant legal counsel for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany.
     The Claims Conference, US, Israeli and Eastern European government representatives, and class-action lawyers are negotiating a slave labor settlement with 16 German firms.
     US insurance regulators, Israel and the conference are negotiating a settlement with insurers on policies brought by Holocaust victims.
     At issue are highly complex issues such as how to value old insurance policies and who is responsible for policies nationalized by Communist states after the war.
     Israel, the conference and class-action lawyers are also in negotiations with Creditstalt (Bank Austria) over its World War II “Aryanization” activities.
     Heilig’s job entails tackling complex legal, political and moral issues in the separate sets of negotiations at frequent meetings in Bonn, Washington, Jerusalem and London.
     She is driven in her work, she says by the inspiration of both her deceased grandfather and father, and the proud encouragement of her remaining family.
     Based in New York, but more likely to be found crisscrossing the globe, Heilig spoke with Today about her role during a brief visit to Melbourne.
     “I really feel that we have morality and justice on our side, so it makes you more fervent, more confident in your position. It gives you that extra drive to go the extra mile, knowing that you’re doing it for such important reasons. I feel honored that I have been given the responsibility and the trust to do the job.”
     Since 1951, the Claims Conference has continuously pursued restitution for Jewish-owned properties stolen or destroyed by the Nazis.
     From the closure of its initial negotiations in 1952, the German government has paid $98 billion for suffering and losses under the Nazis.
     Raised in the Sydney suburb of Maroubra, Heilig moved to Melbourne after university to take up a job with the law firm of Mallesons Stephen Jaques.
     She worked next in Jerusalem with the leading Israeli law firm Herzog Fox Neeman, then relocated to New York and a foreign associate’s position with a leading law firm, Skadden Arps.
     Through her involvement in international Jewish student politics, Heilig befriended Gideon Taylor, the son of a well-known Irish Labor MP.
     It was Taylor, the newly appointed executive vice-president of the Claims Conference, who encouraged her to quit her lucrative corporate work for a job with the conference.
     “I had a feeling, and I think I’ve been proven right, that this is historic,” she says.
     There are moments, such as while delivering a statement on the issue of slave labor to US Under Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstadt in May, when Heilig wonders how it all happened.
     Laughing, she says: “I thought, ‘here am I – this girl from Maroubra, Sydney, Australia – in the State Department and the Under Secretary of State is writing down what I am saying. I am making this statement on behalf of Jewish organizations worldwide. Just how did I get here?” I thought, ‘this is worth it’.  It was really an amazing moment. I was floored.”
     Every fortnight or so, an elderly Holocaust survivor named Magda phones Heilig at her Manhattan office to see if her wartime insurance policy is finally to be honored.
     “She’s such a nice lady. I think it’s important for me to speak to her because these are the people we are fighting for. It is not just us representing these people. They are intrinsically involved.”
     Adds Heilig: “This really is the final moral chapter. Money can never make right loss or destruction but, having said that, it is some expression of justice.”