The West German Parliamentary upper house, the Bundesrat, voted this weekend to extend the deadline for prosecution of Nazi war criminals beyond May 8.
In so doing, the Bundesrat did not act on new legislation. The members simply decided that two draft laws pending before the lower house, the Bundestag, which were approved in principle last week, would assure the continued prosecution of Nazi war criminals, and that this met the wish of the Bundesrat. The Bundestag, in endorsing the principle of extending the effective date of the statute of limitations for prosecution for murder, sent the matter to its legal committee to work out the details, and report back in about 20 days.
The Bundesrat also voted 29 to 12, for a law providing for the compulsory retirement of any judge or state prosecutor who took part in Nazi terror judgments. The law provides for an amendment to the West German constitution to that effect.
The target of the measure, which will be sent to the Bundestag, for approval will be individuals who took part before 1945 in death sentences “if another judgment might have been possible.” Bundesrat members said the new law was made necessary by the discovery of new documents in Poland and other countries on activities of German jurists during the Nazi period.
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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.
