[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 144 (Thursday, October 6, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
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[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

                                 ______


                        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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