A 28-member delegation of prominent Americans will arrive in Bonn March 12 to meet with West German leaders and members of the Bundestag to discuss the statute of limitations on the prosecution of war criminals due to take effect in West Germany Jan. 1, 1980.
The delegation, which includes United States Congressmen and national legal, civic, academic and religious leaders as well as Holocaust survivors, was sent by the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies at Yeshiva University of Los Angeles, at the invitation of the Bonn government.
The group, headed by Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean of the Wiesenthal Institute, will meet with the German leaders from March 13-15 in Bonn and in Munich. They will urge West Germany to take legislative action to eliminate the statute of limitations to allow for the continued investigation, prosecution and incarceration of Nazi war criminals who otherwise would become immune to the judicial process. The delegates will express solidarity with those elements of German society who oppose any legal action that would allow war criminals to escape justice.
Such an act, the Wiesenthal Institute stated, “would be on unforgivable affront to the memories of the 11million victims, a betrayal of the democratic principles espoused by the West German Federal Republic and could only serve to bolster further manifestations of neo-Nazism in various parts of the world.”
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