Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [103]
Dear Mr. Hagerman,
On my return from a series of journeys that have kept me away from August 15th to November 30th (Africa, Belgium, Holland and Germany), I find your letter of November 24th. In it I see a deep preoccupation in the minds of you and Mr. [Hugh] Fullerton regarding our fate and your strong desire to see us set rightly [sic].
This preoccupation of both of you is the result of friendship born during the one year when we gave our home of Candé to the United States government for the Embassy. My wife and I are deeply touched by it …
In 1937 the Treasury Department inquired into our tax position regarding income from sources outside of the United States. As our business is centered in Amsterdam, Holland, and as I have always believed and still do that our entire income is the product of our work and therefore earned income I invited the Treasury Dept., Mr. B. Wait, to order an examination of our books in Amsterdam. This was in December, 1937.
This was done. I was very ill in a hospital of Munich at the time, but in spite of the doctors [sic] orders I received the examiner Mr. Francis T. Smith on two occasions and answered his questions to the best of my ability.
Later, charges for back taxes were made by the Treasury Department. I met them by continuing to contend that in our type of work all our income can only be earned.
Bedaux offered to put his case before the ‘highest court in the land’. He wrote that he had ordered his income from most sources to be set aside to pay the tax demand if he lost the case. He mentioned that the Germans had seized his five companies in Amsterdam, the core of his international business. They were being run by a German engineer ‘whose health and faculties do not permit energetic management.’ In France and Belgium, though, his companies were not confiscated. They ‘are doing more business now than they ever did in peace time, this in spite of the defeat of the two countries above named. To this I have added the North African business opened by me during the year. This is a further proof that our income resulting from our work is earned.’ His energies on his recent Berlin trip were directed to replacing the manager in Holland, and he believed that he ‘will succeed fairly soon. It will enable me to meet our American tax obligations in full under the conditions described above.’
The letter noted that Hagerman had been urging Bedaux to return to the United States or risk losing his American citizenship. Bedaux responded that his citizenship could not be taken away for two reasons:
I have not yet been abroad for a full five years, the date being November 1st, 1942.
I am making a protracted stay abroad to serve an interest vital to the United States, namely the payment of income taxes the nature and amount of which have not yet been determined, taxes that cannot be paid unless I secure an alteration of the confiscatory measures that have been taken against me by Germany. Further I intend when the whole situation has been settled permanently to reside in the United States.
If my interpretation of the two above points is not correct I wish the American Government to know that I would rather lose my citizenship to fight for it later on than to place myself in the position where I would be unable, probably for all times, to meet my tax obligations.
He pointed out that his wife’s citizenship ‘cannot be seriously challenged’. Fern, born in the United States, had American ancestors dating back to 1630. He added that his son, Charles Emile, had been born in the United States and could not be deprived of his citizenship. Charles Emile was with him in France, he wrote, working ‘in a remote village of occupied France, la Haye Descartes’. His son did not know until 4 December that the US consuls had left the Occupied Zone.