III

103D CONGRESS

1ST SESSION S. RES. 162

Relating to the treatment of Hugo Princz, a United States citizen, by the

Federal Republic of Germany.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

NOVEMBER 5 (legislative day, NOVEMBER 2), 1993

Mr. LAUTENBERG (for himself, Mr. BRADLEY, and Mr. LIEBERMAN) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations

RESOLUTION

Relating to the treatment of Hugo Princz, a United States

citizen, by the Federal Republic of Germany.

Whereas Hugo Princz and his family were United States citizens residing in Europe at the outbreak of World War II;

Whereas as civilians, Mr. Princz and his family were arrested

as enemy aliens of the German Government (not prisoners of war) in early 1942;

Whereas the Government of Germany, over the protests of

Mr. Princz’s father, refused to honor the validity of the

Princz family’s United States passports on the grounds

that the Princz family were Jewish Americans and failed

to return the Princz family to the United States as part

of an International Red Cross civilian prisoner exchange;
2

•SRES 162 IS

Whereas the Princz family was instead sent to Maidanek concentration camp in Poland, after which Mr. Princz’s father, mother and sister were shipped to Treblinka death

camp and exterminated;

Whereas Mr. Princz and his two younger brothers were

transported by cattle car to Auschwitz to serve as slave

laborers, where Mr. Princz was forced to watch as his

two siblings were intentionally starved to death while they

lay injured in a camp hospital;

Whereas Mr. Princz was subsequently transferred to a camp

in Warsaw and, then, by death march, to the Dachau

slave labor facility;

Whereas in the closing days of the war, Mr. Princz and other

slave laborers were selected for extermination by German

authorities in an effort to destroy incriminating evidence

of war crimes;

Whereas hours before his scheduled execution, Mr. Princz’s

death train was intercepted and liberated by United

States Armed Forces, and Mr. Princz was sent to an

American military hospital for treatment;

Whereas although the actions of the United States Army

saved Mr. Princz’s life, he was sent to an American facility and was never processed through a ‘‘Center for Displaced Persons’’, a development which would later affect

his eligibility to receive reparations for his suffering;

Whereas following his hospitalization, Mr. Princz was permitted to enter then-Communist-occupied Czechoslovakia

to search for family members, and, after determining

that he was the sole survivor, Mr. Princz traveled to

America where he was taken in by relatives;
3

•SRES 162 IS

Whereas in the early 1950s, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) established a reparations program for ‘‘survivors’’, to which Mr. Princz made timely application in

1955;

Whereas Mr. Princz’s application was rejected, and Mr.

Princz has argued that his rejection was based on the

grounds that he was a United States national at the time

of his capture and later rescued and not a ‘‘stateless’’

person or ‘‘refugee’’;

Whereas Mr. Princz has not received relief from the Federal

Republic of Germany in the intervening 40 years;

Whereas Mr. Princz’s diplomatic remedies were exhausted by

late 1990, forcing him to sue the Federal Republic of

Germany in the Federal District Court for the District

of Columbia in 1992;

Whereas the Court denied Germany’s dismissal motion and

determined Mr. Princz’s situation to be sui generis, given

Germany’s concurrence with the material facts in the

case and its simultaneous failure to accept financial responsibility with respect to Mr. Princz, when it has distributed billions of dollars in compensation to other Nazi

death camp survivors, simply because of his American

citizenship at the time of Mr. Princz’s capture and later

rescue;

Whereas the trial is now stayed pending Germany’s appeal to

the District of Columbia Circuit to require the case to be

dismissed on grounds of sovereign immunity; and

Whereas Germany’s refusal to redress Mr. Princz’s unique

and tragic grievances and to provide him a survivor’s

pension undercuts its oft-voiced claims to have put its

terrible past behind it: Now, therefore, be it
4

•SRES 162 IS

1 Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that the

2 President and Secretary of State should—

3 (1) raise the matter of Hugo Princz with the

4 Federal Republic of Germany, including the Chan5 cellor and Foreign Minister, and take all appropriate

6 steps necessary to ensure that this matter will be ex7 peditiously resolved and that fair reparations will be

8 provided Mr. Princz; and

9 (2) state publicly and unequivocally that the

10 United States will not countenance the continued

11 discriminatory treatment of Hugo Princz in light of

12 the terrible torment he suffered at the hands of the

13 Nazis.

Æ