Elan Steinberg | Advocate, teacher, 59

NEW YORK - Elan Steinberg, 59, who brought what he called a new, "American style" assertiveness to the World Jewish Congress as its top executive, winning more than $1 billion from Swiss banks for Holocaust victims and challenging Kurt Waldheim, the former U.N. secretary-general, over his Nazi past, died Friday in New York City.

The cause was complications of lymphatic cancer, his wife, Sharon, said.

As its executive director from 1978 to 2004, Mr. Steinberg was a key strategist for the congress as it grew bolder under a younger generation of Jews. He helped organize the research, hearings, press leaks, and lawsuit that led the Swiss banks to agree to pay $1.2 billion to Holocaust victims in the late 1990s.

He also ruffled feathers.

Simon Wiesenthal, the relentless hunter of Nazi war criminals, questioned the congress' new aggressiveness when it threw itself into the Austrian presidential campaign in 1986 to try to defeat Waldheim, who was ultimately elected. Waldheim had hidden his membership in a Nazi military unit linked to atrocities.

Wiesenthal argued that Waldheim was "an opportunist" but not a war criminal. He worried that the congress was undoing years of patient work toward reconciling young Austrians and Jews.

Mr. Steinberg countered that electing Waldheim would stain all Austrians.

"For a long time," Mr. Steinberg said, "the World Jewish Congress was meant to be the greatest secret of Jewish life. . . . This is a newer, American-style leadership - less timid, more forceful, unashamedly Jewish."

Mr. Steinberg resigned in 2004 but remained a consultant to the congress' president.

In addition to his wife, the former Sharon Cohen, Mr. Steinberg is survived by three children and a brother.

- N.Y. Times News Service