http://www.forward.com/articles/gop-slams-effort-to-study-wwii-internment-camps-in/A plan to study the treatment of Europeans interned by the United States government during World War II is languishing in the Senate following unexpectedly strong opposition from GOP lawmakers.
A narrow majority of Republican senators, led by Jeff Sessions of Alabama, rejected a proposal to form a congressional commission examining the wartime experiences of Axis citizens and European-born Americans, thousands of whom were held in American internment camps. Co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the bill would also create a separate commission to study the treatment of Jewish war refugees.
As Washington buzzed over the derailed immigration bill last week, wrangling over the so-called Wartime Treatment Study Act reflected an equally deep-seated, if less public, partisan divide. Republican critics of the bill, including Sessions, argue that it is based on flawed findings, and say they fear that it could lead to the paying of reparations. Its backers say the critics are simply loath to investigate possible government wrongdoing given the ongoing war in Iraq.
“The Republicans want to say, ‘Look, these are casualties of war, this is the price people pay for us to protect them, but that doesn’t mean we have to be responsible in a court of law for what we do,’” said Thane Rosenbaum, a novelist and professor of law at Fordham University who has written extensively about Holocaust restitution and historical justice. “They say to themselves that between Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, there is a nest of potential ignominy.”
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