The executive committee of the American Jewish Congress adopted a resolution calling upon the 81st Congress to pass six major amendments to the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Rabbi Irving Miller, chairman of the executive, announced today.
The resolution urges that the Displaced Persons Commission establish a special division for the screening of Nazi collaborators and pro-Nazi elements from the ranks of displaced persons seeking admission. It also calls on Congress to initiate a thorough investigation of the entire degasification program in the American zone of Germany and to arrange for public hearings on the breakdown of the degasification program and on the commutation of sentences of persons found guilty of crimes against humanity.
The proposed amendments are: To allow any displaced persons who entered DP camps before April 21, 1947, to benefit by the act rather than restrict its provisions to those who entered before Dec. 22, 1945; to repeal the section that mortgages future immigration quotas, in order to give emergency relief to DP’s; to repeal the section granting special preference to DP’s from the Baltic states and eastern Poland; to expand the definition of eligible DP’s to include all victims of Nazi racial and religious persecution; to repeal the section giving persons of German ethnic origin, the Volksdeutsche, special benefits; to permit legalization of immigration status of DP’s now in this country without requiring advance Congress” ional approval.
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