The draft bill to indemnify individual victims of Nazism, to which the West German Government gave its preliminary endorsement more than a week ago, has been transmitted officially to the Bundesrat, the Upper House of the Bonn Parliament.
The measure now has at least seven major hurdles to get over in less than the four weeks which remain before Parliament adjourns on July 3. It is doubtful whether this Parliament will ever reassemble before its official dissolution later in the year.
The first of the hurdles is a conference of the nine finance ministers of the constituent states of the Federal Republic, which is scheduled to be held June 11. The main point on the agenda will be the division of costs under the projected indemnification law between the Federal Treasury and the individual state treasuries.
If no agreement is reached, the chances are bleak for quick approval by the Bundesrat which is made up of the representatives of the state governments. Much will depend on the attitude of Federal Finance Minister Fritz Schaeffer, who opposed the reparations agreement during the negotiations at The Hague last year, when he meets the state representatives at the June 11th session. Meanwhile, the Upper House has scheduled its first reading of the indemnification measure for June 19.
In the Bundestag, or Lower House, the first hurdle is the Legal Committee which has already begun hearings on the measure. If the bill wins quick approval from the Bundesrat and the Bundestag Legal Committee it must then run the gauntlet of three separate readings in the Lower House, after which it must be returned to the Upper House for final approval.
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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.
