With counsel for the prominent Jewish attorney Joseph Klibansky demanding his acquittal because of “proven innocence,” the defense completed its summation today in the involved “Jewish Restitution Bank” case, which has been dragging on in a local German courtroom for the past ten months.
Mr. Klibansky, who was indicted for having been an accessory in the violation of corporation and foreign currency laws, will make his final remarks next week. The other four defendants, who were connected with the bank in one capacity or another, will also make their concluding statements. The court will hand down its verdict in about two weeks’ time.
“These monstrous proceedings have become the very archetype of the situation described in Franz Kafka’s famed novel, “The Trial,” declared Dr. Paul Haag on behalf of Mr. Klibansky, an Orthodox Frankfurt-born Jew, whom the Association of Jewish Communities in Hesse recently confirmed as its legal adviser. Dr. Haag intimated that the extent and character of the court case had been designed to ruin his client, to humiliate and traduce him.
Mr. Klibansky became the short-lived bank’s legal adviser in 1949-50 with the intention of helping Jewish refugees, often living in straitened circumstances abroad, to derive some benefit from their blocked accounts in Germany. He had not violated the law in any way, said Dr. Haag after a seven-hour analysis of the charges, although he might have committed honest mistakes. He had not fled, as the heads of the bank had done, but had insisted on seeing his honor vindicated by the court.
Earlier, counsel for the other defendants had also pleaded for acquittal. On behalf of 57-year-old cashier Siegfried Froehlich, who is a refugee from Eastern Germany and the second Jew in the dock, Dr. Anton Reiners argued that for Froehlich, whose profession was that of bank clerk, conviction would mean “the end of the road.” The elaborate investigatory and courtroom proceedings had produced only negligible evidence of wrongdoing, he concluded.
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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.
