The Government announced officially here last night that “there is no reason” for lifting the parliamentary immunity enjoyed by Dr. Theodor Oberlaender, Minister for Expellees and Refugees. Since this means that Dr. Oberlaender cannot be prosecuted for alleged war crimes during the Hitler regime, and since the Cabinet member himself announced last week that he was taking an “indefinite leave of absence, ” the case against Oberlaender seems now to have been closed.
The Government’s ruling against the lifting of parliamentary immunity came after the Federal Public Prosecutor’s office ruled that the Nightingale Battalion–in which Oberlaender had served as an officer under the Hitler regime–did not participate in the mass executions of Jews and Polish intellectuals. It has been charged repeatedly that the battalion conducted those mass murders at Lwow, Poland, in 1941.
While the opposition Social Democratic Party has scheduled an open demand in the Bundestag (lower House of Parliament) for Dr. Oberlaender’s resignation. Dr. Oberlaender himself and some of his backers have begun a series of court actions in an attempt to discredit the Minister’s accusers.
Today, Dr. Oberlaender brought a slander suit against a Social Democratic newspaper. “Vorwaerts, ” which had published documents allegedly proving that the Nightingale Battalion openly advocated a “race war against the inferior people. “
Meanwhile, at Munich, a well-known Bavarian industrialist has filed a libel suit against Prof. Carlo Shmid, Social Democratic Vice President of the Bundestag. The Plaintiff, H. Eichelkraut, accuses Prof. Schmid of having stated falsely, while visiting Israel last winter, that the Nightingale Battalion “was one of the troops commanded to exterminate the Jews. “
A third suit is pending against Paul Wilhelm Wenger, an editor of the Catholic weekly. “Rheinischer Merkur. ” A former officer of the Nightingale Battalion. Friedrich Middelrhauve, is suing Wenger for libel because he printed testimony from Israeli citizens who accused the Battalion of “anti-Jewish pogroms.”
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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.
