American Jewish Committee Denounces Germany’s Deferment of Payments

The decision by West Germany to defer $100,000,000 in indemnification payments to Nazi victims over the next two years was denounced today by the American Jewish Committee as putting “mere budgetary considerations above moral issues.”

The measure to defer such payments, recommended by West German Finance Minister Rolf Dahlgruen because of “budgetary difficulties,” was passed last Thursday in the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament, on its third and final reading. It is now before the Bundesnat, or upper house.

In a statement issued by Dr. John Slawson, executive vice-president, the American Jewish Committee charged that the proposed deferment would violate “elementary justice” since many of the victims were destitute, widowed, and elderly. A postponement, Dr. Slawson continued, would cause “great hardship to many persons whose physical rehabilitation and retraining depend upon such indemnification,” and could set a “dangerous precedent” that might bring on future deferments.

“In the eyes of the world,” Dr. Slawson added, “any new obstacles to granting full material restitution to these persons will be interpreted as a callous disregard for the horrors stemming from the Nazi crimes and an attempt to circumvent a solemn agreement.” The West Germans themselves, he pointed out, have said in the past that such action “could seriously undermine world confidence in Germany’s struggle to create a knowledgeable and democratic citizenry.”

(Organized Jewry in Sweden today protested to West Germany’s Ambassador here against the Bonn Government’s plans to defer indemnification payments due in 1966 to certain Jewish victims of Nazism. The protests were voiced in telegrams sent to the Bonn enboy today by the Jewish Community in Stockholm and the Swedish section of the World Jewish Congress.)