The Central Council of Jews in Germany today objected to the fact that an American Jewish soldier, a former slave laborer in a Nazi camp, has brought suit in the United States High Commission court in Germany against the I. G. Farben, a German trust. The soldier, Rudolf Wachsman, a former German citizen, is asking the equivalent of $200, 000 in back pay and damages for slave labor performed by him during the Nazi regime in the notorious Buna Monowitz synthetic rubber plant operated by the I. G. Farben near the Oswiecim extermination camp.
In objecting to the fact that Wachsman filed his claim in an American military court, Dr.H.G. Van Dam, secretary general of the Central Council of Jewish in Germany, said that the case should have been left to German jurisdiction, since the victim had suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime long before his migration to the United States and many years before he acquired U. S. citizenship.
“If an American court agreed to deal with this case, it might happen that members of the British and French occupation forces would adopt the same course, thus resulting in four different sentences by highest level authorities of four different states, ” Dr. Van Dam argued.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
