A Nazi law which refused to allow two women, now in America, to collect a $7,000 insurance policy, “because they are Jews who have taken up residence abroad,” was upheld by Supreme Court Justice Peck, here yesterday. Justice Peck held no brief for the law. He called it “very obnoxious and offensive and hoped that “in the post-war world justice may be done.”
The suit was instituted by Anna Kleve and Kathe Warisch against a Swiss insurance company which wrote the policy naming them as beneficiaries before they came to the U. S. in 1935. In February, 1942, they demanded payment of the policy’s cash surrender value – $7,000 – via radiogram, but the Swiss firm refused on the grounds that amount of money had already been confiscated by the German government in Berlin.
Though he attacked the German decrees, Justice Peck nevertheless found that “the court is obliged to hold that governing law is no less controlling because it is a bad law.”
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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.
