H. Res. 323
In the House of Representatives, U. S.,
January 26, 1994.
Whereas Hugo Princz and his family were United States citi-
zens 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 pris-
oners 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;
Whereas the Princz family was instead sent to Maidanek con-
centration camp in Poland, after which Mr. Princz’s fa-
ther, 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;
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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 facil-
ity and was never processed through a ‘‘Center for Dis-
placed Persons’’, a development which would later affect
his eligibility to receive reparations for his suffering;
Whereas following his hospitalization, Mr. Princz was per-
mitted 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;
Whereas in the early 1950s, the Federal Republic of Ger-
many 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;
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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 re-
sponsibility with respect to Mr. Princz, when it has dis-
tributed 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
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Represent-
atives that the President and the Secretary of State should—
(1) raise the matter of Hugo Princz with the Fed-
eral Republic of Germany, including the Chancellor and
Foreign Minister, and take all appropriate steps nec-
essary to ensure that this matter will be expeditiously re-
solved and that fair reparations will be provided Mr.
Princz; and