A fresh opportunity to members of the West German Judiciary to resign their posts, if they had served the Hitler regime in the Nazi Peoples Courts, is being contemplated here by the Ministry of Justice, it was learned today.
A bill passed by the Bundestag, lower House of Parliament, had given such former Peoples Court Judges and prosecutors until June 30 to resign their jobs or face dismissal, with loss of pension rights. Only a little more than 100 judges and prosecutors had taken advantage of that law.
Now, it is understood, Dr. Wolfgang Stammberger, Minister of Justice, is pondering the idea of extending the resignation deadline for a brief period. After the expiration of that time, the dismissals and subsequent loss of pension rights would go into effect. It is believed here that a number of judges and prosecutors would welcome the extension of the deadline.
Meanwhile, the most prominent case of an ex-Peoples Court member, former Chief Federal prosecutor Wolfgang Fraenkel, is being investigated by a member of West Germany’s highest court, the Supreme Court at Karlsruhe. The probe had been ordered by Dr. Stammberger. The report on the Fraenkel case will go to the Disciplinary Court at West Berlin.
EAST BERLIN JEWISH COMMUNITY ASKS FOR TRIAL OF PROSECUTOR
Fraenkel had been shown up as a prosecutor in Hitler’s Peoples Court at Leipzig during the war. After a brief suspension from his high post, Dr. Stammberger ordered him dismissed and initiated a probe into Fraenkel’s alleged withholding of information from the present Government regarding his former Nazi collaboration.
A violent attack against Fraenkel, and an appeal to the West German Jewish community, as well as to Jews elsewhere, to demand that he be tried for his Nazi activities, was received here today from the East Berlin Jewish Community. The charges that resulted in the Bonn Justice Ministry’s action against Fraenkel had come, originally, from the East German Communist regime.
All the cases against ex-Peoples Court judges and prosecutors now serving in the West German judiciary apparatus involve those whose Nazi period participation resulted in severe penalties, often in execution, for defendants accused of relatively mild offenses.
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