Plan for Jewish Reparations Bill to Reich Studied by Experts in Paris

Various committees of experts have been set up in Paris to study the possibilities of presenting a defeated Germany with a bill for reparations to Jews whose property has been pillaged, destroyed or confiscated in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

These committees are also considering the possibility of presenting to the ultimate peace conference a bill to the Reich for the millions of dollars which Jewish organizations have spent on emigration and maintenance of refugees.

The groups in Paris which have set up committees of experts to study these questions are engaged in preparing separate surveys and estimates on the extent of Jews losses in each of the territories under German control as a result of specifically anti-Jewish measures. Lawyers and economic experts are engaged in the research.

The present work is of a preliminary nature. It is expected all Jews who have suffered loss through actions of the Nazi regime may later be asked, wherever they now reside, to file formal claims for reparation. With approximately a half million Jews having already emigrated from Nazi territories, it is believed that the total claim may amount to billions of dollars.

Special registration of damages suffered by Jews in Germany who are citizens of foreign countries will be undertaken, particularly for Polish Jews, many of whom had been residing in the Reich for years before the war. At least 40,000 such Jews had been registered with Polish consulates in Germany before the Nazi invasion of Poland. A large number of them were owners of real estate which the Nazis confiscated Others owned commercial and industrial enterprises which were “Aryanized.”

It is intended that the Jewish claims be made part of a general claim for reparations which the Polish Government-in-exile would submit to the peace conference.

These preparations have already aroused comment from the Nazi press. Die Zeit, official Nazi organ for the Bohemia-Moravia Protectorate, states: “World Jewry is already getting busy with peace terms and hopes for a new Versailles Treaty.”

Die Zeit also reports the determination of the Nazi authorities to eliminate the Jews from all economic positions and to accomplish the same thing in Slovakia, where, the paper says, there are already 60 anti-Jewish laws in existence.

“Nevertheless,” it adds, “the Jews in Slovakia still manage to circumvent these laws. Measures are, however, now in preparation to put an end to Jewish corruption and to see that the Aryanization of Jewish enterprises should be carried out without any camouflage so that the Jews should once and for all be ousted from Slovakia’s economic life.”