[Congressional Bills 103th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 323 Introduced in House (IH)]

103d CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. RES. 323

 Relating to the treatment of Hugo Princz, a United States citizen, by 
                    the Federal Republic of Germany.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           November 21, 1993

    Mr. Pallone (for himself, Mrs. Lowey, Mr. Schumer, Mr. Frank of 
 Massachusetts, Mr. Menendez, Mr. Lantos, Mr. Zimmer, and Mr. Berman) 
submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee 
                           on Foreign Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
 Relating to the treatment of Hugo Princz, a United States citizen, by 
                    the Federal Republic of Germany.

Whereas Hugo Princz and his family were United States citizens residing in 
        Europe at the outbreak of World War II;
Whereas as civilians, Mr. Princz and his family were arrested as enemy aliens of 
        the German Government (not prisoners of war) in early 1942;
Whereas the Government of Germany, over the protests of Mr. Princz's father, 
        refused to honor the validity of the Princz family's United States 
        passports on the grounds that the Princz family were Jewish Americans 
        and failed to return the Princz family to the United States as part of 
        an International Red Cross civilian prisoner exchange;
Whereas the Princz family was instead sent to Maidanek concentration camp in 
        Poland, after which Mr. Princz's father, mother, and sister were shipped 
        to Treblinka death camp and exterminated;
Whereas Mr. Princz and his two younger brothers were transported by cattle car 
        to Auschwitz to serve as slave laborers, where Mr. Princz was forced to 
        watch as his two siblings were intentionally starved to death while they 
        lay injured in a camp hospital;
Whereas Mr. Princz was subsequently transferred to a camp in Warsaw and, then, 
        by death march, to the Dachau slave labor facility;
Whereas in the closing days of the war, Mr. Princz and other slave laborers were 
        selected for extermination by German authorities in an effort to destroy 
        incriminating evidence of war crimes;
Whereas hours before his scheduled execution, Mr. Princz's death train was 
        intercepted and liberated by United States armed forces, and Mr. Princz 
        was sent to an American military hospital for treatment;
Whereas although the actions of the United States Army saved Mr. Princz's life, 
        he was sent to an American facility and was never processed through a 
        ``Center for Displaced Persons'', a development which would later affect 
        his eligibility to receive reparations for his suffering;
Whereas following his hospitalization, Mr. Princz was permitted to enter then-
        Communist-occupied Czechoslovakia to search for family members, and, 
        after determining that he was the sole survivor, Mr. Princz traveled to 
        America where he was taken in by relatives;
Whereas in the early 1950s, the Federal Republic of Germany established a 
        reparations program for ``survivors'', to which Mr. Princz made timely 
        application in 1955;
Whereas Mr. Princz's application was rejected, and Mr. Princz has argued that 
        his rejection was based on the grounds that he was a United States 
        national at the time of his capture and later rescued and not a 
        ``stateless'' person or ``refugee'';
Whereas Mr. Princz has not received relief from the Federal Republic of Germany 
        in the intervening 40 years;
Whereas Mr. Princz's diplomatic remedies were exhausted by late 1990, forcing 
        him to sue the Federal Republic of Germany in the Federal District Court 
        for the District of Columbia in 1992;
Whereas the Court denied Germany's dismissal motion and determined Mr. Princz's 
        situation to be sui generis, given Germany's concurrence with the 
        material facts in the case and its simultaneous failure to accept 
        financial responsibility with respect to Mr. Princz, when it has 
        distributed billions of dollars in compensation to other Nazi death camp 
        survivors, simply because of his American citizenship at the time of Mr. 
        Princz's capture and later rescue;
Whereas the trial is now stayed pending Germany's appeal to the District of 
        Columbia Circuit to require the case to be dismissed on grounds of 
        sovereign immunity; and
Whereas Germany's refusal to redress Mr. Princz's unique and tragic grievances 
        and to provide him a survivor's pension undercuts its oft-voiced claims 
        to have put its terrible past behind it: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that 
the President and the Secretary of State should--
            (1) raise the matter of Hugo Princz with the Federal 
        Republic of Germany, including the Chancellor and Foreign 
        Minister, and take all appropriate steps necessary to ensure 
        that this matter will be expeditiously resolved and that fair 
        reparations will be provided Mr. Princz; and
            (2) state publicly and unequivocally that the United States 
        will not countenance the continued discriminatory treatment of 
        Hugo Princz in light of the terrible torment he suffered at the 
        hands of the Nazis.

                                 <all>