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would have today to ask any of the governments to give you information about.

[A further response to this question was subsequently provided by Mr. Gerety and appears in app. 5, p. 209.]

Ms. HOLTZMAN. Are you aware of any difficulties we are having today?

Mr. RIEGER. I didn't hear the question.

Ms. HOLTZMAN. I said, are you aware of any difficulties we are having today with respect to requests for information from Eastern European countries or the Soviet Union on war crimes?

Mr. RIEGER. Of course not. It's just an assumption on my part that you would have difficulty in getting it.

Ms. HOLTZMAN. I see, but I am not asking you about today, I am asking you about why at that time, when you were a high official in the administration of this program, no requests for information were made.

Did you want to find out whether or not these people engaged in atrocities or war crimes in Eastern Europe or in the Soviet Union? Mr. RIEGER. We did everything we could in the circumstances prevailing at the time.

Ms. HOLTZMAN. What were those circumstances? Was there an order prohibiting you from doing this? Was there a law prohibiting you from doing this? Was there a directive?

Mr. RIEGER. From making inquiry in Eastern European countries?

Ms. HOLTZMAN. Yes, or the Soviet Union with respect to atrocities committed at the direction of Nazis. There was no order, directive, statute, regulation, law, that you can recall?

Mr. RIEGER. No.

Ms. HOLTZMAN. Why wasn't it done, then?

Mr. GERETY. I can only say we accepted the standards that were in force when I came in that had been established by the ICIS, as I think they called it-that is, the Intergovernmental Committee for Internal Security—and we checked with what was available.

Now, we didn't have any jurisdiction in any country behind the Iron Curtain.

Ms. HOLTZMAN. By statute?

Mr. GERETY. We were not there. I know we didn't, at least I feel we didn't, and I can't comment further.

Ms. HOLTZMAN. I would just say that considering that a number of requests that have been made to countries such as Poland have produced important information with respect to proceedings against persons who came to this country in violation of the immigration laws, I think you would have to recognize that the failure to have sought information on these persons allowed our country to become a haven for persons who were guilty of war crimes and atrocities.

'I think it was a serious defect in the administration of those laws. Certainly considering the number of atrocities that were committed in Eastern Europe, particularly against the Jews and others, it's regrettable that more of an effort was not made to obtain background information from Eastern European sources prior to admitting these people into the United States. Mr. EILBERG. Thank you, Ms. Holtzman.

Mr. GERETY. I would like to say I share that sentiment; it is regrettable if any of them came in.

Mr. EILBERG. Mr. Gerety and Mr. Rieger, we thank you for your presence. We are sure that you testified honestly and it is just a pity that you don't have fresher recollections and better knowledge of where records are and so forth.

You know what we are engaged in and we are trying to explore thoroughly the whole matter. These hearings will continue until we have substantially more knowledge than we presently have. We thank you very much for your attendance.

Thank you.

Mr. GERETY. Thank you.

Mr. EILBERG. The Chair would like to announce that we will take one more witness, since it deals with the same general area with which this testimony has just dealt. It will be necessary to take a brief recess of 15 minutes during which I ask that everyone kindly leave the room.

Thank you.

[A brief recess was taken.]

Mr. EILBERG. The subcommittee will come to order.

Our final witness for today will be Mr. Almanza Tripp.

Mr. Tripp is a former Immigration and Naturalization Service official who was stationed in Europe and who worked with the Displaced Persons Act.

Mr. Tripp, we welcome you and we would like to swear you in. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Mr. TRIPP. I do.

Mr. EILBERG. Mr. Tripp, I am sure you have observed our style this morning.

If you have a statement we will be glad to hear from you.

TESTIMONY OF MR. ALMANZA TRIPP, FORMER IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE OFFICER STATIONED IN EUROPE WITH THE DISPLACED PERSONS ACT

Mr. TRIPP. I prepared no statement because it is too complex a matter to put in a small memorandum.

Mr. EILBERG. All right.

Would you wish to comment on any of the statements you heard this morning?

Mr. TRIPP. No. I presume that you are mostly interested in the testimony that I can give regarding the displaced persons program. Mr. EILBERG. That is correct, sir.

Mr. TRIPP. And there has been no discussion of that that I have heard.

Mr. EILBERG. All right; then, we will ask you a few questions, if you don't mind.

Mr. Tripp, you were in charge of the INS contingent stationed in Europe during the implementation of the Displaced Persons Act. [For text of Displaced Persons Act, see app. 1, p. 161.]

Previous congressional testimony indicates that you had a number of conflicts with Displaced Persons Commission officials in Europe.

Do you remember those conflicts?

Mr. TRIPP. Oh, yes.

Mr. EILBERG. Can you give us a summary of the cause of those conflicts? Can you tell us about them?

Mr. TRIPP. Perhaps it boils down to the philosophy of two groups that we had in the program, those interested mostly in the quantity of the DP's-displaced persons-they would bring to the United States, and those who were more interested in the quality of the DP's.

I happen to be one of those interested in the quality. The other groups, like the voluntary agencies, naturally, having their charter passed on religion in many instances, were anxious to help people and without too much consideration about the type of person they were helping.

We also found that the international organizations, IRO in particular, was anxious to move as many people as they could.

Mr. EILBERG. What was the name of that organization again? Mr. TRIPP. International Refugee Organization, IRO it was known as. The Displaced Persons Commission was anxious to make a good showing, because the program was one that was very favorably looked upon by the administration at the time. As a result of the desire to bring in as large a number as possible in a short period of time, I am afraid that some of those agencies cut corners a bit.

Perhaps the most important one to you people now in the matter you are considering was the failure to wait for a return from the Berlin document center check before processing the application of the displaced person.

Mr. EILBERG. Can I interrupt you at that point by noting, that Mr. Gerety, who preceded you on the witness stand, testified that checks were made with the Berlin documentation center.

Mr. TRIPP. He was speaking of the refugee relief program. I am speaking of the displaced persons program.

Mr. EILBERG. All right.

Mr. TRIPP. The request for information was sent to the Berlin document center.

I might also add one was sent to the provost marshal's office with a fingerprint chart. But in an effort to move as many in as short a period of time as possible, the cases, the applications, were processed before a return came back.

Mr. EILBERG. How quickly were these people moved? I mean what kind of delay would be involved if one waited for those returns?

Mr. TRIPP. I testified before the Senate subcommittee in 1950, February, I checked my testimony before I came down here, and at that time I said that if we stopped everything until we got those checks through it would be about a 3-week breakdown in the program. That is what I said at that time.

Mr. EILBERG. I see.

Mr. TRIPP. I remember some of the things that happened over there in this program very vividly, but some of them I don't remember so well.

Mr. EILBERG. But do you still feel that the 3-week period was worthwhile and should have been adhered to?

Mr. TRIPP. I think it should have, yes. In checking the record of the 1950 hearing, I find that that was in February 1950, and at that time about 135,000 entered under the act, and the coordinator of the Displaced Persons Commission in Europe testified at that time that some 70 cases of that number had been processed before adverse information was received.

They were in the United States when the adverse information was received from the Berlin document center. That was with the first 135,000.

Now, I don't remember whether that condition was corrected or not. I am hazy on whether it was changed.

I might also say that the then Commissioner of Immigration, Mr. Miller, testified that between 250 and 300 persons entered before adverse information was received from the Berlin document center or the Provost Marshal's office.

Mr. EILBERG. During what period of time was that?

Mr. TRIPP. His testimony was given in February 1950, and the program didn't really get underway until, oh, the late spring of 1949. So it was during that period that most of them came in.

We did, in my organization, stop some people whom we found out through examination, not through the Berlin document center, had been members of a German military unit. We stopped them and put them through our procedure we followed at that time on the theory that they had participated in a movement hostile to the United States and by serving in an element of the German Army. We had a very good case that we used for a pilot case that I recall, a Latvian who took considerable pride in the fact that he not only had been accepted into their Waffen SS, as they called it, but he had been successful in acquiring the status of a commissioned officer.

On appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, that man was ordered admitted, and thereafter most of those who served in the military service and on whom we had no other information would be admitted.

That included not only the Waffen SS but there were a number of other units, the Ukraine Brigards, Vlasov's Army, Hlinka Guard. One of the late ones we never did get to was the Prince Eugen Brigade.

Mr. EILBERG. Do I understand that persons who were members of these organizations were permitted to enter this country?

Mr. TRIPP. These are all persons who served, speaking about persons who served in one of these units. Unless we had other information to keep them out. I testified into part of this before the Senate committee and, apparently, it was a congressional desire they not be kept out because in the 1950 amendment to the Displaced Persons Act the language was such that it did not specifically direct that they be excluded.

Section 13 was extended at some length, and I don't remember the wording of it now. You probably have it, but the part about military service was rather vague.

I think it said something about whether they served the voluntary or not and, anyway, it tied our hands as far as stopping them for military service only.

Mr. EILBERG. All right, Mr. Tripp.

We will have to recess for a few minutes to go over and vote. There is a vote going on the floor of the House, and we will be right back.

The subcommittee stands in recess.

[A short recess was taken.]

Mr. EILBERG. The subcommittee will come to order.

Mr. Tripp, we were exploring conflicts of opinion that you were having with members of the Displaced Persons Commission or officials thereof with respect to the quality issue you described, quality versus quantity.

it.

Mr. TRIPP. That's right.

Mr. EILBERG. Was there any resolution of that dispute?

Mr. TRIPP. Well, yes; in a sense. I have to enlarge a little bit on

We took the stand that if an applicant for entry under the DP Act was ineligible for that status, he then fell under the general immigration law, and we had jurisdiction to exclude him.

The Displaced Persons Commission took exception to that and insisted that once they had made a finding of eligibility we were bound by it. That was one of the main controversies, and that was, you might say, decided in the working of both the minority and majority reports on the Refugee Relief Act in 1953 wherein they adopted the reasoning that we had put forth at the hearings in 1950, and even went so far as to say that the act should not be regarded as a mandate to bring x number of people into the United States; it only made x number of people eligible.

And they went further, to insist that no visa could even be issued under the Refugee Relief Act until the applicant had been approved for visa issuance by an Immigration officer, which, in a sense, endorsed our stand in the DP program, if you follow me. Mr. EILBERG. Yes.

Mr. TRIPP. There is one thing I would like to enlarge on: This service in military organizations.

In my testimony to the Senate committee in 1950, I expressed concern that our service would be subject to criticism for admitting these people unless it was passed at higher level. It was interesting-and if you want to look it up you will find it on page 688 of the Senate record-when they amended section 13, in the language they did it, it led me to believe that the Senate did not want us, or the Congress did not want us, to exclude for military service alone. That does not preclude the denial of entry if there are other factors connected with the service; and, of course, whenever we found an applicant had been a member of some German military unit, we questioned him quite thoroughly, to try to determine if there had been anything such as persecution; but it is very difficult

Mr. EILBERG. Any what?

Mr. TRIPP. Such as persecution, but it is very difficult to prove; and then there are other angles to the Berlin document center records. That includes the names of people who were not necessarily military service but may have been naturalized Germans during the war.

It also includes a large number of people who apparently were not thought of too highly by the Nazi Germans as collaborators, and they were put into farm work or factory work, and they are

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