[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 144 (Thursday, October 6, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: October 6, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
E X T E N S I O N O F R E M A R K S
HUGO PRINCZ' FIGHT FOR JUSTICE
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HON. FRANK PALLONE, JR.
of new jersey
in the house of representatives
Thursday, October 6, 1994
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I have been working to help Hugo Princz, a
resident of Highland Park, NJ and a survivor of the Holocaust, in his
fight for reparations from Germany. I would like to submit for the
Record an article which appeared in the New York Times on October 3,
1994.
[From the New York Times, Oct. 3, 1994]
Hope Fading for Holocaust Survivor's Reparations
(By Kimberly J. McLarin)
Highland Park, N.J., Oct. 2--Had it not been shattered
years ago in a concentration camp, Hugo Princz's heart would
surely be breaking now. Not at the imminent death of his 40-
year battle to extract reparations from the German
Government, but at the fact that it is his own beloved
America that stands in the way.
``I cannot understand how they could side with the German
Government,'' Mr. Princz said in an interview in his home
here in the still suburbs of northern New Jersey. ``I just
cannot understand. One American should help out another
American, especially in a case like this.''
Because of the quirky circumstances of his birth and his
rescue from the Nazis, Mr. Princz has been denied reparations
by the Germans for four decades. Diplomatic efforts on his
behalf have failed. A lawsuit stalled under the weight of a
Federal law prohibiting Americans from suing foreign
governments. Now, bills to amend that law are winding their
way through both houses of Congress and could come to the
floor before Congress recesses in the coming days.
But vehement opposition from the State Department and
Justice Department threatens to quash the amendment and with
it, what Mr. Princz sees as his last chance at gaining the
reparations that many of his fellow camp survivors have
already received.
``I am very disturbed that in something so serious politics
should enter,'' he said. ``It is just a shameful thing.''
From a chair in his rose-colored living room, Mr. Princz
recounted his time in Nazi death camps with dispassion. He
was born to a naturalized American businessman in 1922 in
what is now Slovakia, making him a United States citizen at
birth. In March 1942 his family's house was surrounded by
local towns people. They were given 30 minutes to pack and
were handed over as Jewish prisoners to the Nazis, who
ignored the family's American passports and refused to
include them in a Red Cross civilian prisoner exchange
program.
At the Maidanek concentration camp, the family was
separated. His parents and sisters disappeared into the
notorious Treblinka death camp.
The Nazis sent Mr. Princz and his two brothers to
Auschwitz. One day his younger brother was hurt in a work-
related accident.
``I passed by a building that was supposed to be a
hospital,'' he said. ``It was a pigsty. If you got sick and
they threw you in there you got sicker because they didn't
feed you. I look in there and I see my young brother, 14
years old. Nothing but bones.''
Seven days later, the Nazis killed everyone in the
hospital, Mr. Princz said. His other brother was lashed for
sneaking Mr. Princz some food and later died.
Mr. Princz said he spent time in Auschwitz, was sent to do
forced labor in Warsaw after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and
was also enslaved in an underground airplane factory at
Dachau. All told he endured more than three years of torture,
enslavement and deprivation at the hands of the Nazis.
``That's a lifetime,'' he said. ``Jail would have been a
picnic in comparison.''
He was liberated May 1, 1945, by American soldiers, who saw
the ``U.S.A.'' the Nazis had stitched on his shirt and sent
him to an American military hospital for treatment. After
searching futilely for his family, Mr. Princz left Europe and
settled in the United States.
When West Germany began compensating Holocaust survivors in
the early 1950's, Mr. Princz applied for reparations. But he
was turned down by the Germans with the explanation that as
an American, he was neither a German citizen nor a refugee
under the guidelines of the Geneva Convention. And because he
had been sent directly to an American hospital, Mr. Princz
had not been registered as a Holocaust victim through a
displaced-persons camp.
Since then, Mr. Princz said, he has waged a dogged battle
against the German Government, driven both by a desire for
the money and the vindication it would represent. The monthly
checks his friends receive gnaw at him. Although he would
have settled for the $550 a month he believes he was entitled
to in 1953, he wants a lump-sum payment now.
``It bugged me,'' he said, ``Why should I be excluded? It's
like a cancer in you.''
Mr. Princz said he got nowhere until he hired a lawyer,
Steven Peries, in the mid-1980's. But by 1992, even the
diplomatic efforts Mr. Peries had begun had stalled, so Mr.
Princz sued Germany. He won the first round: Judge Stanley
Sporkin of United States District Court in Washington denied
the German Government's motion to dismiss on the grounds of
immunity.
But Germany appealed and this July the United States Court
of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that
Germany could not be sued, under the Foreign Sovereignty
Immunity Act. That law prohibits most suits by American
citizens in United States courts against foreign governments
But in a powerful dissent to the Princz decision, Judge
Patricia Wald wrote that the German Government had forfeited
its claims to immunity with its barbaric treatment of Mr.
Princz.
``When the Nazis tore off Princz's clothes, exchanged them
for a prison uniform and a tattoo, shoved him behind the
spiked barbed wire fences of Auschwitz and Dachau, and sold
him to the German armament industry as fodder for their
wartime labor operation, Germany rescinded any claim under
international law to immunity from this court's
jurisdiction,'' she wrote.
That dissent figures prominently in Mr. Princz's appeal to
the Supreme Court. But William R. Marks, a Washington lawyer
who joined the Princz case last year at no charge, said
amending the law was probably Mr. Princz's last hope.
The bills now in Congress would allow United States
citizens who are the victims of torture, genecide or state-
sponsored terrorism to file suit in American courts against
the foreign government that committed the act.
Both the Senate and House bills have cleared judiciary
committees and could be taken up by Congress before it
recesses this month. But supporters say opposition to the
bills from the Clinton Administration and some Republican
members of Congress has stalled their passage.
``We have a tough fight,'' said Representative Charles E.
Schumer, a Democrat from Brooklyn who shepherded the bill
through the House Judiciary Committee.
The State Department has argued that tinkering with the
immunity act could damage delicate international relations
and might not accomplish the objective intended. The
Administration also fears that if the United States allows
its citizens to sue foreign governments, those governments
will reciprocate.
``But the difficulty lies in forcing a foreign government
to do something it doesn't want to do,'' said Jamison Borek
Selby, a deputy legal adviser with the State Department.
Ms. Selby said the State Department preferred to press such
claims through diplomatic channels, as they have for Mr.
Princz. Indeed President Clinton himself raised the issue
when he met with the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, in
January, the State Department says.
The German Government, through a lawyer, Peter
Heidenberger, has argued that the immunity act protects it
from Mr. Princz's lawsuit. It has also said that it cannot
risk triggering a flurry of similar lawsuits by settling with
Mr. Princz for any amount approaching the $17 million he is
seeking.
Mr. Heidenberger did not return repeated phone calls to his
office in Washington. But in an interview with the weekly
newspaper Legal Times, Mr. Heidenberger said Germany has
offered Mr. Princz a lump-sum payment of $4,500 and monthly
payments of about $400. The Government cannot afford more, he
said.
Mr. Marks said that the German offer appeared only after
Judge Sporkin's ruling denying Germany immunity under the
law. He said the offer was made as part of a German program
compensating Holocaust survivors living in former Communist
countries, and in it, Mr. Princz would be considered a Slovak
instead of an American. It is a technicality, but for Mr.
Princz, who still shakes with anger at the way many Slovaks
collaborated with the Nazis, it was unacceptable.
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