The governmental program of the new West Berlin Cabinet pledges an acceleration of compensation payments for individual Nazi victims and contains the admission that “faith in the authorities’ good, will to indemnify National Socialist injustice should not be further shaken by dilatory administrative practices.”
The new “Interior Minister” of this city-state, Senator Joachim Lipschitz, pointedly told a meeting of Nazi victims here that he “does not consider himself bound by the organizational measures and personnel appointments” of his predecessor and would imbue the administration of the indemnification program with a spirit of urgency.
“The shame that overwhelms me whenever I hear or read of the Nazi atrocities must be shared in every office of the Indemnification Agency,” he stated, “because no petty haggling over claims will occur wherever it is alive.”
The youngest member of the West Berlin Cabinet, ’36-year-old Lipschitz is its most undaunted fighter against neo-Nazism. His father, a popular Jewish physician, committed suicide at the onset of the anti-Semitic persecutions. His mother is not Jewish, so that young Lipschitz was even drafted into the Wehrmacht, together with other half-Jews, and lost an arm while serving as an infantryman on the Russian front. Later, he went into hiding in Berlin and took part in anti-Nazi activities.
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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.
