I
107TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
H. R. 3552
To establish a National Foundation for the Study of Holocaust Assets.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
DECEMBER 20, 2001
Mr. SHERMAN (for himself, Mr. MALONEY of Connecticut, Mr. WAXMAN, Mr.
CROWLEY, Mr. MCNULTY, Mr. FROST, Mr. KUCINICH, Mr. HOEFFEL,
Mr. OWENS, Ms. WATSON of California, Mr. UDALL of New Mexico, and
Mrs. CAPPS) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Com-
mittee on Financial Services
A BILL
To establish a National Foundation for the Study of
Holocaust Assets.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Holocaust Victims’ As-
sets, Restitution Policy, and Remembrance Act’’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress makes the following findings:
(1) The United States should continue to lead
the international effort to identify, protect, and re-
turn looted assets taken by the Nazis and their col-
laborators from victims of the Holocaust.
(2) The citizens of the United States should un-
derstand exactly how the United States Government
dealt with the assets looted from victims of the
Nazis that came into its possession.
(3) The United States forces in Europe made
extraordinary efforts to locate and restitute assets
taken by the Nazis and their collaborators from vic-
tims of the Holocaust.
(4) However, the restitution policy formulated
by the United States and implemented in the coun-
tries in Europe occupied by the United States had
many inadequacies and fell short of realizing the
goal of returning stolen property to the victims.
(5) As a result of these United States policies
and their implementation, there remain today many
survivors or heirs of survivors who have not had re-
stored to them that which the Nazis looted.
(6) The Presidential Advisory Commission on
Holocaust Assets in the United States, established
in Public Law 105–186, found the following:
(A) The United States authorities gen-
erally restituted those victims’ assets that came
under United States control to the national gov-
ernment of their country of origin. In these
cases the recipient government bore the respon-
sibility to locate the rightful owner and to
restitute the property turned over to it by
United States authorities. The Commission
found little evidence of efforts by these coun-
tries to effect restitution and no evidence that
the United States monitored the recipient coun-
tries’ compliance with these responsibilities.
(B) The policy explained in subparagraph
(A) excluded those who no longer had a nation
to represent their interests, or who had fallen
victim to the ruthless efficiency of Nazi geno-
cide and whose property had been rendered
heirless and unidentifiable. For those cases, the
United States designated ‘‘successor organiza-
tions’’ to sell heirless and unclaimed property
and apply the proceeds to the care, resettle-
ment, and rehabilitation of victims. The adop-
tion of this policy led to many assets being too
hastily labeled as heirless or unidentifiable, with
the result that they were assigned to the suc-
cessor organizations rather than to the individ-
uals themselves.
(C) The United States military government
established strict deadlines that created narrow
windows for filing petitions for restitution and
prevented many rightful owners from asserting
their rights.
(D) Even when property was returned to
individual owners or their heirs, it was often
only after protracted, cumbersome, and expen-
sive administrative proceedings that yielded set-
tlements far less than the full value of the as-
sets concerned.
(E) Better policy implementation in Ger-
many and Austria would have prevented identi-
fiable victims’ assets from being stored in dis-
organized and poorly secured military ware-
houses and facilities where they were occasion-
ally subject to theft and requisitioning by
United States servicemen and civilian employ-
ees.
(F) In 1953, a Senate judiciary sub-
committee delving into the activities of the
United States Office of Alien Property (OAP)
criticized the agency for lacking good business
practices in the way it handled the assets under
its control. The subcommittee particularly sin-
gled out the ‘‘inefficient and dilatory’’ manner
in which claims were processed. Of approxi-
mately 15,000 title claims only about 6,000 had
been processed.
(G) Congress regarded frozen German as-
sets as a source from which to pay United
States war claims for damages suffered by
American businesses and individuals. The
United States War Claims Commission received
more than $200,000,000 from liquidated Ger-
man and Japanese assets. Thus, United States
war claims were paid in part by German assets
that likely included victims’ assets.
(7) The United States Government should re-
dress and improve upon the results that occurred as
a result of the policies it established to assist the
victims or their heirs to recover property stolen from
them during the Nazi regime.
(8) The best way to improve upon these results
is to create a single institution to serve as a central-
ized repository for research and information about
Holocaust-era assets.
(9) Enhancing these policies will also assist vic-
tims of future armed conflicts around the world.
(10) The conference on Material Claims
Against Germany has worked since 1951 with the
Government of the United States and with other
governments to accomplish material restitution of
the looted assets of Holocaust victims, wherever
those assets were identified, and has played a major
role in allocating unclaimed restitution funds, includ-
ing funds contributed by the United States, to the
Nazi Persecutee Relief Fund.
SEC. 3. ESTABLISHMENT AND PURPOSES.
(a) ESTABLISHMENT.—There is established as an
independent entity of the executive branch of the United
States Government the National Foundation for the Study
of Holocaust Assets (in this Act referred to as the ‘‘Foun-
dation’’).
(b) PURPOSES.—The purposes of the Foundation
are—
(1) to serve as a centralized repository for re-
search and information about Holocaust-era assets
by—
(A) compiling and publishing a comprehen-
sive report that integrates and supplements
where necessary the research on Holocaust-era
assets prepared by various countries’ commis-
sions on the Holocaust;