Leaders of several American groups of Holocaust survivors are voicing opposition to the Anti-Defamation League decision to bestow an award on an attorney who has been involved in distributing nearly $1 billion in settlement money to survivors and the heirs of victims.

The attorney, Burt Neuborne, was scheduled to receive the ADL’s American Heritage Award last night in recognition of his “enduring work promoting and defending American values,” the organization said in a statement.

Mr. Neuborne, a law professor at New York University, has helped distribute to survivors and heirs of Holocaust victims a $1.25 billion court settlement struck with several Swiss banks in 1998. He has come under some criticism among American survivors for defending a distribution formula that favors survivors in Russia over survivors here. Several survivors are opposing Mr. Neuborne’s request for $4.76 million in fees for working on the case.

Mr. Neuborne has defended his thousands of hours of work on the Swiss banks case, saying the work was extraordinarily high quality, that the fee is consistent with market rates, and that his work helped win more money for the victims. He could not be reached for comment yesterday.

In an e-mail sent to the national director of the ADL, Abraham Foxman, several men and women involved in survivor groups around the country denounced the ADL for honoring a man who has provoked such angry sentiment.

“ADL’s disrespect for us and our martyred loved ones will tarnish the organization forever,” ten survivors wrote in the e-mail sent Monday morning.

A Queens man who signed the letter, Leo Rechter, said that he found out about the dinner too late to organize any “picketing or demonstration” against the dinner. Mr. Rechter is secretary of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation, USA.

Mr. Rechter said he believed that the choice of Neuborne as an honoree was an effort by the ADL to give support to Mr. Neuborne’s fee application, which is pending before a magistrate-judge, James Orenstein of U.S.District Court in Brooklyn.

An ADL spokeswoman, Myrna Shinbaum, said the ADL’s decision to honor Mr. Neuborne was not based only on his involvement in the Swiss banks litigation. “We understand there is a controversy but that has nothing to do with giving him the award,” Ms. Shinbaum said. “We’re honoring him for not what he did or didn’t do for restitution It goes well beyond that to his lifetime work on the First Amendment.”

The decision to give the award to Mr. Neuborne was first reported in New York magazine.