A 72-year-old Holocaust survivor credits the persistence that saw him through seven Nazi concentration camps for a reparations settlement with the German government.
"Somehow I survived to be standing here as an American citizen inside the Capitol of this great country, claiming victory 40 years after I first sought compensation from Germany and 50 years after my liberation from Dachau by, fittingly, the U.S. Army," Hugo Princz said.Princz of Highland Park, N.J., was one of 11 U.S. citizens to settle with Germany on Tuesday for $2.1 million in reparations.
Princz, whose case has been in the courts and pressed by President Clinton and members of Congress, was the only recipient publicly identified in the agreement between the U.S. and German governments.
State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said the recipients were noncombatants with U.S. citizenship during World War II. Only Princz was identified by the Nazis at the time as a U.S. citizen, said his lawyer, William Marks.
The 11 will share a lump-sum $2.1 million settlement based on the length of time in the camps, their injuries and other indignities, said Steven Perles, another of Princz's lawyers.
A lawsuit by Princz against the successors of two Nazi-era companies he said used him for slave labor was dropped as part of the settlement. The four successor companies also will pay Princz alone in addition to the government settlement.
Neither side would disclose how much Princz will receive, but Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said Princz would get the largest single share.
The German Embassy confirmed the agreement.
"The settlement today can never bring my parents, my siblings back, nor relieve my nightmares of the death camps or the physical pain I suffer," Princz said.
"But it will finally help correct a terrible injustice first committed against me as an American over 50 years ago and compounded ever since as Germany continued to wage war against me," Princz said as his wife, Dolores, held his arm.