Dr. Prinz Sees ‘sabotage’ Efforts on Bonn Statute Aimed at ‘buying Off’ Rightists

A leader of the American Jewish Congress charged today that some West German politicians were trying to “sabotage” the Bonn Cabinet’s decision to abolish the statute of limitations on Nazi war crimes prosecutions in order to “buy off” neo-Nazis and other right-wing nationalist forces “who would re-introduce Nazi doctrines into German public life today.”

Dr. Joachim Prinz, chairman of the A.J. Conference’s commission on international affairs, called upon Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger to take the lead in supporting the decision of the coalition Cabinet last April 25 to press for abolition of the statute which is to go into effect on Dec. 31, 1969. An abolition bill will receive its first reading in the Bundestag (lower house) tomorrow.

Dr. Prinz, a former Berlin rabbi who fled the Nazis, referred to “disturbing reports of an imminent retreat from the Cabinet’s forthright and positive decision.” He said at a press conference that some German politicians were “ready to let those who carried out Hitler’s brutal programs 30 years ago escape trial” because of the growing influence of right-wing groups in West Germany. “Political barter of the principle that Nazi war criminals should be held accountable affronts every canon of public decency,” Dr. Prinz said.

Kurt R. Grossman, an American authority on German affairs, said the recent acquittal of a former Nazi official on murder charges made it “imperative” that the statute of limitations on capital crimes be abolished. He deplored a decision by the West German Supreme Court which in effect exempted Nazi war criminals from prosecution because they “acted under orders.”