Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, today expressed satisfaction with the results of conferences which he held during the week-end with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, West German Finance Minister Franz Etzel, and the Premiers and Finance Ministers of all the states in the West German Federal Republic.
The talks dealt with speeding up the processing of about 1,700,000 individual restitution claims by Nazi victims. Sixty percent of these claims are Jewish. At the present processing rate, about 700,000 claims will not have been dealt with when the German restitution law expires in early 1963.
Following his talk with Dr. Goldmann, Chancellor Adenauer announced that the Bonn Government was determined to complete compensation for the Nazi victims “as quickly and as well as possible,” In an effort to accelerate the processing of the claims, Dr. Adenauer summoned an unusual meeting of the top-ranking officials of the 10 West German States, and urged them to assign more personnel to deal with the claims, as well as to simplify administrative procedures and to liberally interpret the restitution law.
On June 13, the Federal Parliament, here, adopted a budget in which 1,300,000,000 deutsche marks were allocated for indemnification of victims of Nazism. The sum is the same as last year’s appropriation for those purposes.
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.
