The Senate of the city of Hamburg will meet in special session tomorrow to discuss the implications of the decision last week of the Hamburg Supreme Court that the author and publisher of an anti-Semitic pamphlet could not be prosecuted because the publication circumspectly attacked “international Jewry” rather than the Jewish people.
It is anticipated that all parties represented in the Senate will join in a plea to the Federal Government at Bonn to tighten the law against racism and anti-Semitism to make prosecution of offenders legally more feasible. Individual judges of the Hamburg court have replied to attacks on the court’s decision by insisting that as the Federal law is now written prosecution of anti-Semitism is difficult.
Dr. H. G. van Dam, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, in a protest to Chancellor Adenauer yesterday the ruling of the Hamburg court, asked legal action against “slanderous attacks against the Jewish community in Germany, the approval of National Socialistic crimes and defamation of the memory of the dead victims of National Socialism.” He also noted the slow pace and continued hampering of procedures in the indemnification cases. He wrote that the victims of Nazism still were not receiving adequate compensation.
Meanwhile, the Central Council has filed a civil suit against Friedrich Nieland, the author, and Adolf Heimberg, the printer, of the brochure.
The Schleswig-Holstein Ministry of Culture announced today the suspension of a high school teacher in Luebeck for allegedly making anti-Semitic remarks. Complaints were voiced recently in the provincial legislature about the teacher, Lother Stielau, who is also district chairman of the neo-Nazi German Reich Party. An official investigation has been launched by the Ministry.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
