JUNE 14 (legislative day, JUNE 1), 1948.-Ordered to be printed Mr. COOPER, from the Committee on the Judiciary, submitted the following REPORT [To accompany S. 2764) The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the bill (S. 2764), to amend the Trading With the Enemy Act, having considered the same, do now report the bill to the Senate favorably, without amendment, and recommend that the bill do pass. The purpose of the proposed legislation is to enable the Government to return the property which was vested from persecuted persons (not known to be such at the time of vesting), who have died without heirs, to organizations designated by the President which will use the property for the rehabilitation and resettlement of persecuted persons. STATEMENT Attached hereto and made a part of this report are letters received from the Department of State and the Department of Justice setting forth their favorable opinion of the proposed legislation: Hon. JOHN S. COOPER, Judiciary Committee, United States Senate. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, MY DEAR SENATOR COOPER: Reference is made to your communication of June 4, 1948, requesting the views of this Department concerning S. 2764. a bill to amend the Trading With the Enemy Act. The purpose of S. 2764 is to enable the Government to return property which was vested from persecuted persons (not known to be such at the time of vesting), who have died without heirs, to organizations designated by the President which will use the property for the rehabilitation and resettlement of persecuted persons. Persecuted persons who are alive, or their heirs if they are dead, may presently receive returns of vested property pursuant to Public Laws 322 and 671, Seventyninth Congress (sec. 32 of the TWEA). This policy was adopted because this Government has no desire to use for its own purposes, i. e., as reparation, or to pay American war claimants, the assets of persons who were themselves the victims of our enemies in World War II. It appears to this Department that the most appropriate course is to turn over the heirless assets of persecuted persons to or S. Repts., 80–2, vol. 4- -64 ganizations which will devote such assets to the rehabilitation and resettlement of those persecuted persons who are still alive. Such action on the part of this Government would be consistent with, and in aid of, the provisions of the Paris Reparations Agreement of 1946. Article 8 of that agreement provides as follows' "ARTICLE 8. ALLOCATION OF A REPARATION SHARE TO NONREPATRIABLE VICTIMS OF GERMAN ACTION "In recognition of the fact that large numbers of persons have suffered heavily at the hands of the Nazis and now stand in dire need of aid to promote their rehabilitation but will be unable to claim the assistance of any government receiving reparation from Germany, the Governments of the United States of America, France, the United Kingdom, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, in consultation with the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees, shall as soon as possible work out in common agreement a plan on the following general lines: "A. A share of reparation consisting of all the nonmonetary gold found by the Allied Armed Forces in Germany and in addition a sum not exceeding $25,000,000 shall be allocated for the rehabilitation and resettlement of nonrepatriable victims of German action. "B. The sum of $25,000,000 shall be met from a portion of the proceeds of German assets in neutral countries which are available for reparation. "C. Governments of neutral countries shall be requested to make available for this purpose (in addition to the sum of $25,000,000) assets in such countries of victims of Nazi action who have since died and left no heirs. "D. The persons eligible for aid under the plan in question shall be restricted to true victims of Nazi persecution and to their immediate families and dependents, in the following classes: "(i) Refugees from Nazi Germany or Austria who require aid and cannot be returned to their countries within a reasonable time because of prevailing conditions; "(ii) German and Austrian nationals now resident in Germany or Austria in exceptional cases in which it is reasonable on grounds of humanity to assist such persons to emigrate and providing they emigrate to other countries within a reasonable period; "(iii) Nationals of countries formerly occupied by the Germans who cannot be repatriated or are not in a position to be repatriated within a reasonable time. In order to concentrate aid on the most needy and deserving refugees and to exclude persons whose loyalty to the United Nations is or was doubtful, aid shall be restricted to nationals or former nationals of previously occupied countries who were victims of Nazi concentration camps or of concentration camps established by regimes under Nazi influence but not including persons who have been confined only in prisoners of war camps. "E. The sums made available under paragraphs A and B above shall be administered by the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees or by a United Nations Agency to which appropriate functions of the Inter-Governmental Committee may in the future be transferred. The sums made available under paragraph C above shall be administered for the general purposes referred to in this Article under a program of administration to be formulated by the five Governments named above. "F. The nonmonetary gold found in Germany shall be placed at the disposal of the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees as soon as a plan has been worked out as provided above. "G. The Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees shall have power to carry out the purposes of the fund through appropriate public and private field organizations. "H. The fund shall be used, not for the compensation of individual victims, but to further the rehabilitation or resettlement of persons in the eligible classes. "I. Nothing in this article shall be considered to prejudice the claims which individual refugees may have against a future German Government, except to the amount of the benefits that such refugees may have received from the sources referred to in paragraphs A and C above." It is the opinion of this Department that the enactment of S. 2764 is highly desirable as an aid in carrying out the foreign policy of the United States. Because of the urgency of the matter this letter has not been cleared with the Bureau of the Budget, to which a copy is being sent. Sincerely yours, CHARLES E. BOHLEN, Counselor (For the Secretary of State). DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Hon. ALEXANDER WILEY, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. MY DEAR SENATOR: This is in response to your request for the views of this Department concerning S. 2764, a bill to amend the Trading With the Enemy Act. Section 1 of the bill would amend section 32 of the Trading With the Enemy Act by permitting the President to designate organizations as successors in interest to deceased persons, who if alive would be eligible to receive returns of property which they formerly owned but which was vested by the Alien Property Custodian. The bill is limited in its application to the property of such deceased persons who while alive were victims of political, racial, or religious persecution by the government of a country which was an enemy of the United States during World War II. Adequate safeguards to protect the interests of the United States are explicitly provided. First, the designated organization must give satisfactory assurances that it will use the property returned for the rehabilitation and resettlement of other victims of persecution who belong to the same group as the former owner. Second, the bill requires any designated organization to undertake to give back any returned property or the equivalent value thereof at any time within 2 years, if the unlikely possibility should occur that a living person entitled to the property should be discovered during that period. Third, the designated organization will make reports as required and submit to examination of its books by the Government. Moreover, no returns may be made to such an organization before July 31, 1949 (or 2 years from the date of the vesting of the property in question, whichever is later) without a determination by the President or such officer or agency as he may designate of the probable death of the former owner without surviving eligible heir or next of kin, and even after that date no return may be made if any other persons has a pending claim for the return of the property. Finally, there is an explicit provision assuring that the amendment will not bar the payment of debt claims under section 34 of the Trading With the Enemy Act. Section 2 of the bill appears to be based upon S. 2431, a bill now pending in the Senate which would extend for approximately a year the time within which claims for return may be filed under the Trading with the Enemy Act. This Department has already transmitted a favorable report on S. 2431. The present bill would add a proviso permitting successor organizations designated pursuant to section 32 to file notices of claim until January 1, 1952. This limited extension of the period for the narrow class of cases comprehended by S. 2764 seems entirely appropriate. The very nature of heirless unclaimed property would make it extremely difficult for a successor organization to ascertain the existence of such property. Indeed in the typical case it is only the circumstance that no claim has been filed prior to the regular expiration date that will give rise to a presumption that the property is heirless and thereby afford an occasion for the successor organization to file a claim. The groups who will benefit from the proposed amendment are the very groups who were regarded as enemies by the countries against which this country went to war. The extent to which inhuman treatment of all kinds was imposed upon these people is notorious. In the imposition of persecution, they were treated as groups. This bill would treat them as groups in returning property of deceased fellow victims for the rehabilitation and resettlement of survivors. Accordingly, this Department recommends the enactment of this bill. The director of the Bureau of the Budget has advised that there is no objection to the submission of this report to the Committee for its consideration Yours sincerely, PEYTON FORd, The Assistant to the Attorney General. O JUNE 14 (legislative day, JUNE 1), 1948.-Ordered to be printed Mr. WILEY, from the Committee on the Judiciary, submitted the following REPORT [To accompany H. R. 3190) The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the bill (H. R. 3190) to revise, codify, and enact into positive law, title 18 of the United States Code, entitled "Crimes and Criminal Procedure," having considered the same, do now report the bill to the Senate favorably, with amendments, and recommend that the bill, as amended do pass. The purpose of the bill is to codify and revise the laws relating to Federal crimes and criminal procedure. With the amendments proposed by the committee the bill includes all pertinent laws to January 5, 1948, and is made effective September 1, 1948. The bill makes it easy to find the criminal statutes because of the arrangement, numbering, and classification. The original intent of Congress is preserved. A uniform style of statutory expression is adopted. The new Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure are keyed to the bill and are reflected in part II of title 18. Obsolete and executed provisions are eliminated. Uncertainty will be ended and there will no longer be any need to examine the many volumes of the Statutes at Large as the bill, upon enactment, will itself embody the substantive law which will thus appear in full in the United States Code. Codification and revision of the criminal statutes was undertaken in October 1943 by the House Committee on Revision of the Laws. A bill prepared by that committee passed the House on July 16, 1946, Seventy-ninth Congress, was reintroduced in the present Congress as H. R. 3190, and passed the House again on May 12, 1947. The care with which the bill has been prepared and brought to date in the present Congress under the supervision of the House Committee on the Judiciary is reflected by that committee's report, House Report No. 304 of the Eightieth Congress. For a detailed |