Deadline Is Sunday for Holocaust Claims

Survivors of Nazi concentrations camps who were U.S. citizens at the time of their internment may be eligible for reparations, and the deadline to file a claim is Sunday, officials said this week.

The Holocaust Claims Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, is seeking individuals who might be eligible for monetary compensation under a 1995 agreement between the United States and Germany, commission chairwoman Delissa Ridgway said.

The program stems from the case of Hugo Prinzz, a Czechoslovakian-American who was interned during World War II, lost 70 family members to the Nazis and later fought a 40-year battle for reparations, Ridgway said.

The 1995 agreement called for $2.1 million to be divided among Prinzz and several survivors like him, Ridgway said. A second part of the agreement gave the U.S. two years to locate other survivors who fit a similar profile, she said. Later this year, commission officials will present the claims to the German government, she said.

The major criterion “is that they must have been U.S. citizens at the time of Nazi persecution. . . . The vast majority of [survivors] here are Europeans who became Americans after the fact,” Ridgway said. “Also, the individual must have been interned in a concentration camp or comparable conditions, and there were many kinds of Nazi camps other than concentration.”

For more information or to apply for reparations, contact the commission directly by fax, (202) 616-6993, or send a letter postmarked before Sunday to: Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, Washington, D.C. 20579. Include name, address, daytime telephone number and a complete list of camps with their precise names.