Former Minister for Refugees Theodor Oberlaender has reportedly been cleared by a special parliamentary committee of the dominant government party, the Christian Democratic Union, of charges that he was part of a Nazi team that ordered the execution of Polish and Jewish intellectuals in 1941, during World War II, at Lwow, which was then part of Poland.
As a result, it is believed, a move undertaken months ago, to lift Dr. Oberlaender’s parliamentary immunity so that he may be prosecuted for atrocities, will very likely be quashed when Parliament reconvenes.
Dr. Oberlaender resigned from the Adenauer Cabinet last spring under fire of charges that he had been a member of the Nazi “Nightingale Battalion,” held responsible for mass murder at Lwow in 1941. However, he is still a member of the Bundestag, the lower house of the West German Parliament.
According to the CDU probers, the murders at Lwow were committed in part by the retreating Soviet Army and in part. by Ukrainians who were then under the direction of Russia’s present Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, After the Russian army retreated, under battering by Hitler’s forces, murders were committed in Lwow, the investigators report, by Nazi Secret Servicemen whose ” responsible leaders were found guilty by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and put to death. “
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