Dr. Nahum Goldmann, head of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, conferred here today with Chancellor Adenauer and Finance Minister Dr. Fritz Schaeffer on improving and expediting the payment of indemnification to individual Nazi victims. Later, he conferred also with Prof. Luwig Erhard, Minister for Economic Affairs, and high officials of the Foreign Ministry.
Dr. Goldmann reported to Chancellor Adenauer on the meeting of the board of directors of the Claims Conference which took place in New York last month. He asked the Chancellor and the other members of the Bonn government with whom he met to use their influence with Parliament on behalf of those Jewish victims who, because they were not former residents of Germany, receive little or no compensation.
Meanwhile, the powerful German Trade Union Federation, in its publication, threw its support behind, indemnification for individual victims. The payment of indemnification claims to individual Nazi victims should have priority over expenditures for the new German Army, it asserted in an article by Dr. Walter Otto, one of the Justices of the Supreme Administrative Court for West Germany and West Berlin.
The $241,000,000 spent for indemnification of individual victims within the past six years does not constitute an adequate amount when viewed against the backdrop of the billions now being made available for rearmament, wrote Judge Otto, “since indemnification is the touchstone for the extent to which National Socialist mentality has been overcome.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
