The American Jewish Conference, at a meeting of its Interim Committee held under the chairmanship of Henry Monsky, today adopted a 13-point program which will be submitted to the meeting of the Foreign Ministers for inclusion in the peace treaty with Germany. The program provides:
1. Germany must acknowledge her shemeful guilt for her monstrous crime against the Jews. Without such acknowledgment, a peace treaty with Germany would distort the records of history beyond recognition.
2. Germany must cleanse her public and private life from the invidious poison of anti-Semitism. She must show by her conduct that she is ready and willing to purge herself of diseased ideologies of race superiority. Equal rights for all and non-discrimination must be imposed and secured as the guiding principles of her laws and practices.
3. Germany’s readjustment to the principles of democracy will be a slow process. Her past conduct has shown that the treatment of Jews within her borders cannot safely be left to her discretion for many years to come. Their status and treatment must therefore be a matter of international concern and supervision.
4. To attest her atonement for her crimes against the Jews, Germany must effectively punish all those who had a hand in the persecution of Jews or benefitted from it.
5. Jews who have been deprived of their nationality by discriminatory laws and practices must have the right to reacquire it, but shall not be compelled to do so.
6. No Jew should be forced to remain on soil soaked with his brother’s blood. Jews in Germany must have the unfettered right to emigrate from Germany and to take their belongings with them.
7. All Jewish displaced persons, who find themselves in Germany by force or circumstances, must have the protection of Allied or other international authorities and must never be allowed to fall under German jurisdiction, but Germany, responsible for the uprooting of these people from their former homes, must provide the means for their subsistence until these unfortunate people can go to the country of their choice.
8. Jews who will remain in Germany must be given freedom of association and the right to pursue their religious, communal and other activities with the same statue and privileges they enjoyed before January 30, 1933, the date of Hitler’s ascent to power.
INDEMNITY FOR ALL JEWS IS REQUESTED: REPARATIONS DEMANDED
9. The property of which individual Jews have been robbed must be returned to them or their heirs. Hairless Jewish property must be transferred to and applied by a responsible Jewish body to be set up for the purpose of relief and resettlement of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.
10. Germany must indemnity fully all Jews who have suffered in their person or property from measures and acts of Nazi persecution.
11. Reparations should be paid by Germany for the damage and suffering she has caused by her persecution of the Jews. It can be no more than a taken because the damage and destruction she has wrought on the Jews is immeasurable.
12. Jews and their property must be exempted from any measures which are applied by the Allies to the property of enemy nationals, for it would be grossly unjust to treat them as enemies. Jews and their property must be equally protected against use by Germany for paying her war debts.
13. The enforcement of all treaty provisions concerning Jews cannot be left to German authorities. The clauses must be supervised by international machinery to which Jewish individuals and their organizations and communities must have access. In addition, the treaty provisions must also be enacted as part of the constitutional law of Germany and Germany must be obligated to implement them by appropriate legislation to be approved by the Allied authorities.
A resolution adopted by the Interim Committee emphasizes that the implementation of these basic provisions in the peace treaty with Germany is mandatory “if that treaty is to be an instrument for the reconstitution of a moral society and the vindication of the principles for which the democratic world sacrificed blood and treasure.”
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