Louise Slaughter: “I urge passage of the Slaughter-Waxman-Schakowsky amendment to H.R. 1646 that would require the Secretary of State to…”

“I urge passage of the Slaughter-Waxman-Schakowsky amendment to H.R. 1646 that would require the Secretary of State to report to Congress twice a year on the status of the German foundation, Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future. The amendment also expresses the sense of Congress regarding the urgency of payments to Holocaust slave and forced labor camp survivors, and encourages the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims to work with the Secretary of State in gathering the information required for the report. Behind this amendment are real faces, faces of survivors from a variety of concentration and forced labor camps. Thousands suffered torture, mental abuse, loss of family, destruction of their culture during the Holocaust; yet they continue to wait on reparations for the suffering they endured so many years ago. Nearly a year after the agreement signed by the United States and Germany establishing the German foundation as the exclusive forum for the resolution of Holocaust-era restitution claims, not one Deutsche Mark has been paid out to a Holocaust survivor.”