
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, September 19, 1995                   TAG: 9509190045
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

GERMANY OKS WWII REDRESS

A half-century-long effort to force the German government to pay reparations to American survivors of Nazi death camps will reach a successful end today with a $2 million settlement deal between the U.S. and Germany, Clinton administration and private sources disclosed late Monday.

The deal marks the first time that Americans who were taken prisoner and victimized by the Nazis during the Holocaust have been able to obtain payments from Germany as compensation for their suffering, according to officials familiar with the case. Eleven people will share in the payments.

During the past 40 years, Germany has accepted responsibility for Holocaust victims and has awarded reparations to more than 2 million people - none of them American citizens or American-born. At least one American, Hugo Princz of Highland Park, N.J., had been offered money from the Germans' compensation fund but had turned it down as inadequate, the Germany Embassy here said.

Princz and his family, all U.S. citizens, were Jews living in Slovakia in 1942, and were treated as enemy aliens and taken prisoner by the Nazis. His father, mother and sister were exterminated; his two brothers died after being used as forced labor. Hours before Princz was to be killed, he was rescued by U.S. forces.

Under the deal to be signed today by the two governments, Princz and 10 other American-born people will divide $2.05 million under a formula gauged to the severity of their suffering: their time as prisoners, their injuries and other indignities.

Also Monday, it was announced that Nazi victims in Austria will receive about $7,000 each from a new Austrian government fund.

by CNB