{"id":285459,"date":"2026-07-03T00:38:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T00:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/285459\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T00:38:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T00:38:35","slug":"judah-gribetz-dies-at-97-in-queens-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/285459\/","title":{"rendered":"Judah Gribetz dies at 97 in Queens, New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judah Gribetz, top aide to former New York governor Hugh L. Carey and the mind behind a complex plan that distributed more than a billion dollars in restitution to half a million Holocaust<\/a> survivors, died in his home on Friday in Queens, New York<\/a>, at the age of 97, the New York Times reported.<\/p>\n

His son, Sidney Gribetz, confirmed his death,\u00a0the\u00a0NYT said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gribetz was born in Brooklyn on April 1, 1929, to Abraham and Ida (Heller) Gribetz. His father became executive director of the Hebrew Free Loan Society, which helped needy immigrants, in 1938.<\/p>\n

He attended Boys High School in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn<\/a>, later earning bachelor\u2019s and law degrees from Columbia University and a master\u2019s degree from New York University. He went on to serve in the Navy, and later entered a private law practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report added that he married Jessica Shapiro in 1952, who survives him, as well as two sons, two daughters, a brother, four grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n

\"Mr.Mr. Gribetz, fifth from the left, at a May 1975 meeting at the White House with President Gerald R. Ford to discuss emergency aid to New York City. (credit: Harvey Georges\/Associated Press\/The New York Times)<\/p>\n

Gribetz was a lawyer and counsel to New York\u2019s 51st governor in 1975, a time in which New York City was heading towards financial disaster, with a deficit of around $2.6 billion, according to the report.<\/p>\n

Gribetz was one of Governor Carey\u2019s chief negotiators during talks with the city\u2019s mayor, Abraham D. Beame, with whom he had a rocky relationship at the time. He is credited with playing a \u201cconciliatory and helpful role offstage\u201d by Richard R. Shinn, an insurance industry executive who also had a prominent role in the negotiations, the report said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was important in bringing those guys together, keeping them each informed and aware of how the other one felt,\u201d Shinn added.<\/p>\n

Gribetz returned to private law practice in 1979, where he remained active in civic affairs, the NYT said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was also president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and author of the book \u00a0\u201cThe Timetables of Jewish History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in Jewish History\u201d (1993), which he wrote alongside Edward L. Greenstein and Regina Stein, according to the report.<\/p>\n

The report explained that Gribetz was appointed by a federal judge in 1999 as a special master charged with creating a plan to distribute $1.25 billion that Swiss banks had agreed to pay to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused them of having inflicted further harm on targets of Nazi execution.<\/p>\n

The half a million claimants included people who had deposited money in the banks to safeguard it from the Nazis, enslaved laborers for German companies, and people whose Nazi-looted property was disposed of through Swiss<\/a> institutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Members of the Romani community, Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, disabled people, and gay people were also included in the claim.<\/p>\n

A ‘Solomonic role’\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gribetz had been given a \u201cSolomonic role,\u201d the NYT cited The Forward as saying.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It took Gribetz a year and a half to come up with a 900-page plan that allocated up to $800 million for Holocaust survivors, with their payments adjusted for inflation. The remaining $450 million included former enslaved laborers and those whose property had been plundered during the war, who would be aided through various programs, said the report.<\/p>\n

According to the NYT, nearly $1.288 billion was distributed to more than 458,400 claimants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to do as transparent and as far-reaching a solution as possible,\u201d Gribetz had told the NYT, adding that the plan had been arduous but \u201cvery satisfying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gribetz was known for working long hours for his \u201cpropensity for waxing loud, forceful and dramatic,\u201d said the NYT.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Beame told the Times: \u201cHe\u2019s never roared at me, but I\u2019ve heard him make himself known. But everybody who knows him knows that\u2019s just an outward facade: Down deep, he\u2019s very easygoing and pleasant.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judah Gribetz, top aide to former New York governor Hugh L. Carey and the mind behind a complex…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[98,79,15400,9,24,63,7666,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-285459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-brooklyn","tag-diaspora","tag-holocaust","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-obituary","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}