Nazi City Gets Jew’s Bequest

no substitutions for them would be made.

Surrogate Delehanty expressed disagreement with this latter view and ruled that “the gift is not valid because made to trustees in a foreign country.”

The surrogate’s decision continued: “If there were inability of trustees to act, the trust would nevertheless be subject to administration. If counsel are unable to agree on the fact respecting existence or non-existence of the officers in the city of Mannheim, answering the description in the will, or upon their powers, the court on application of counsel will fix a date for hearing and will take proof thereon.”

In the memorandum submitted for Robert Levy, it was charged that the bequest is invalid because of “anti-Semitism and anti-Catholic feeling of the Hitler or Nazi government which controls Germany today.”

Levy asked that the court take judicial account of the “plight of Jews and Catholics” in Germany in that they are being “persecuted by the so-called Nazis.”

The charges contained in the Levy memorandum were emphatically denied in an answer submitted in behalf of the German officials by the law firm of Donovan, Leisure, Newton and Lumbard, 90 Broad street.

“No doctrine of Nordic or ‘Aryan’ supremacy,” the attorneys declared, “has been officially adopted by the German government. No poor relief has been denied any one in Germany on account of religion or race.”

The bequest by Dreyfuss was made in memory of his parents, Daniel and Wilhelmina Dreyfuss, with the provision that it was to be distributed by the Mannheim officials “among such benevolent and philanthropic or educational corporations or associations of a charitable nature in the city of Mannheim as they may determine.”