Join the AAJLJ on Tuesday, January 25th at 7 p.m. ET for a Special Program for Holocaust Remembrance Day 77 years after the Holocaust: Roadblocks to Restitution and a Path Forward Featuring Donald Burris, Eli Rosenbaum, and Arthur Traldi Moderated by Alyssa Grzesh RSVP to saleckson@aol.com (Zoom link will be sent before the presentation) In the wake of the Holocaust, most of the world could not possibly conceive of what “justice” might look like. How can there be justice for the six million Jews who were murdered? What is justice for the one and a half million slain Jewish children, who never experienced adulthood? How can there be justice when we think of, not only all of the artwork and cultural artifacts that were stolen, but also of the scientific discoveries, the symphonies, the works of art, the beautiful books that never became real because of the death camps? Donald Burris, Eli Rosenbaum, and Arthur Traldi are but a few of the incredible lawyers who have searched for a measure of justice for the victims and heirs of victims of the Holocaust. Mr. Rosenbaum and Mr. Burris have devoted their lives to, respectively, finding and prosecuting Nazi war criminals and recovering Nazi-looted art. Mr. Traldi served as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, litigating cases involving charges of genocide, and now is working at the Brandeis Center to combat anti-Semitism and ensure that “Never Again” is a promise that remains fulfilled. Join us at the AAJLJ to discuss their work and numerous accomplishments, the obstacles they have encountered along the way, and how they think we can pave a path forward to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity. Donald Burris: Mr. Burris, the senior founding partner in the firm of Burris & Schoenberg, LLP, has been actively involved in a sophisticated national and international business litigation and business law practice for almost fifty (50) years. Mr. Burris is an honors graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, where he finished at the top of his class and served as Editor-in-Chief of Volume 57 of the Georgetown Law Journal. After a judicial clerkship with Circuit Judge James R.L Browning, Jr of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, he was initially based in Washington, D.C. and he has maintained his principal office in Los Angeles and resided in Santa Monica since 1976. He is admitted to practice in California, the District of Columbia, other federal jurisdictions and the State of Maryland and is a member of the Bar of the United States Supreme Court. In the course of representing his broad client base Mr. Burris has been called upon to perform diverse tasks including overseeing litigation as a lead or local counsel, providing “consigliore”- type services to clients contemplating or already involved in litigation, drafting legal opinions as to proposed corporate actions and supervising the actual acquisitions or sales of businesses involving a number of industries. He has also served with distinction on a number of Boards of Directors for public and private companies as well as for non-profit entities such as the Friends of the Brentwood Art Center (which he helped found), the newly-formed Institute for the development of Preservation of Culture and World-wide Sustainability”, and Global Green, a California-based entity also dedicated to developing economic self-sufficiency throughout the United States and the world. He also proudly served with distinction under the tutelage of Senator Samuel Ervin and Professor Samuel Dash as an Assistant Counsel to the U.S. Senate Watergate Committee in the 1970’s and has been designated as an expert witness in a number of cases relating to multiple aspects of litigation and legal ethics. Since the late 1980’s, when they formed their law partnership, Mr. Burris has worked with his close friend and colleague, E. Randol Schoenberg, in the successful pursuit of a number of valuable art works and other assets stolen by the Nazi authorities before and during World War II. The culmination of these efforts was the landmark case of Altmann v. Republic of Austria 541 U.S. 677 (2004), at the conclusion of which the Austrian Government was ordered to, and did, return to the firm’s client’s possession five (5) priceless historic paintings by Gustav Klimt. Mr. Burris has authored three (3) well-received law review articles directly pertaining to his work in this field, with the most recent article presenting a comprehensive review of his experiences working with Jewish families to retrieve Nazi-looted art. At this stage of his career, he is recognized as one of a relatively small group of lawyers-legal scholars in this field. Eli Rosenbaum: Eli Rosenbaum is the longest-serving prosecutor and investigator of Nazi criminals and other perpetrators of human rights violations in world history, having worked on these cases at the U.S. Department of Justice for more than 35 years. He holds undergraduate and MBA degrees in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also taught finance, and a law degree from the Harvard Law School. Currently serving as Director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy and Policy in the Justice Department Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, he works on matters involving individual and corporate responsibility for human rights violations. Rosenbaum is best known for having been in charge of the Justice Department’s efforts in the Nazi cases, rising from trial attorney in the Criminal Division’s “Nazi-hunting” Office of Special Investigations (OSI) to ultimately serving as OSI’s Director for more than 15 years. Under Rosenbaum’s leadership of the former OSI, the U.S. Justice Department program won more World War II Nazi cases than did the law enforcement authorities of all the other countries of the world combined, including a victory that culminated in the deportation to Germany of a former Nazi concentration camp guard just last year. He also directed the Justice Department’s successful efforts to trace the fate of gold, artwork and other assets looted by the Nazis and its leading role in the interagency effort that resulted in the discovery, declassification, and release over 8 million pages of classified documents in U.S. Government files pertaining to WWII Nazi and Japanese criminals and their crimes. It is the only program of its kind to have won awards from Holocaust survivor groups and Jewish organizations, and last year it won the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s highest honor, the Elie Wiesel Award, which Rosenbaum accepted on behalf of his agency. Between his two tenures at DOJ, Rosenbaum served as a corporate litigator at the law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in Manhattan and then as General Counsel of the World Jewish Congress (WJC). At the WJC, he directed the WJC investigation that resulted in the worldwide exposure of the hidden Nazi past of former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim – an exposure that was the subject of his 1993 book Betrayal: The Untold Story of the Kurt Waldheim Investigation and Cover-Up, which was selected by The San Francisco Chronicle for “Best Books of 1993” and by The New York Times for “Notable Books of 1993.” His numerous awards include the Justice Department Criminal Division’s highest award for career service (2020), the Anti-Defamation League’s “Heroes in Blue” award, the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Human Rights Law Enforcement, the Joseph Wharton Award of the Wharton Club of Washington, DC, and the Honorary Fellowship Award of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, presented annually to one attorney “who has distinguished himself or herself in commitment to public service” by “ma[king] significant contributions to the ends of justice at the cost of great personal risk and sacrifice.” An NBC Nightly News profile of Rosenbaum is viewable at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qraAA8qUf5o. Arthur Traldi: Arthur is an international lawyer with more than a decade of experience litigating cases involving allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the law of armed conflict. He presently serves as a Senior Counsel at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law, senior consultant with Lexpat Global Services, and senior fellow with the Technology, Law, and Security Program at American University’s Washington College of Law. From 2010 to 2017, Arthur served as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Arthur has also served on teams making submissions to the International Criminal Court, United States Supreme Court, European Court of Human Rights, and other courts in the U.S. and abroad. Before joining ICTY, he served in Chambers at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and clerked for Justice Debra Todd and Judge Arthur L. Zulick in Pennsylvania. Arthur regularly gives talks, leads trainings, and publishes on issues in international humanitarian law and international human rights law. He has worked with AAJLJ on amicus briefs on atrocity crime cases, including two Supreme Court cases on Holocaust restitution. Arthur received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and his undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary. He is certified to practice law before the state courts of Pennsylvania, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and the United States Supreme Court. He is co-chair of the American Bar Association’s International Criminal Law Committee, an expert panelist with TrialWatch, and a member of the American Bar Association’s International Criminal Justice Standards Advisory Group. Alyssa Grzesh: Alyssa Grzesh is a New York-based commercial litigator with Adam Michael Levy, P.C. She previously served as executive director of the AAJLJ, with whom she worked on an amicus brief on behalf of Jewish organizations and allies, as amici curiae, in support of a petition for cert in Weiss et al., v. National Westminster Bank PLC. She published an article on the case in the 2021 issue of the NYLitigator, the publication of the Commercial and Federal Litigation Section of the New York State Bar Association. She recently worked with the AAJLJ and a team of lawyers on amici briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Holocaust restitution plaintiffs. Alyssa also serves as the VP-Finance treasurer of the Jewish Lawyers Guild, and on the 2022 Civil Court Independent Screening Panel. Alyssa received her J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College. Please contact Alyssa Grzesh, agrzesh@gmail.com, with any questions.