Victims of Nazi persecution, who are now American citizens, should be compensated for war damages to their property in Germany on an equal basis with other American citizens, the American Jewish Committee urged today. It proposed that the pending Administration-approved Senate Bill No. 2227 be amended to include as eligible claimants those former aliens who were Nazi persecutes.
Testifying before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Trading With the Enemy Act, of which Sen. Olin D. Johnston is chairman, Prof. Herman A. Gray of New York University, a member of AJC executive board, declared that there is ample precedent for legislation establishing “that persons who were treated as enemy by the enemies of the United States should be accorded substantially the same rights as citizens of the United States.”
“That principle” he pointed out, “is embodied in such legislative enactments as the Trading with the Enemy Act, which in 1946 was amended to provide for return of property to persons who, while technically enemy nationals, were in fact treated as enemies by Germany and Japan and by their satellites, and in various international acts and agreements, among them the treaties of peace with Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania, all of which were ratified by the Senate of the United States.”
The Senate bill contains two basic provisions. The first would permit German citizens to reclaim their pre-war deposits in the U.S. to the limit of $10,000, which, as enemy alien assets, had been confiscated by the U.S. Government. The second part of the bill would establish a $100,000,000 fund from repayments by Germany of American loans made before the rise of Hitler. From this fund, American citizens would be compensated for war damages up to a limit of $10,000 for any one individual. The amendment suggested by the AJC would extend to American citizens, who were victims of Nazi persecution, the same right to be paid from this fund as those who were citizens before the war.
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