German Jews Ask Parliamentary Probe of Kuester’s Dismissal

The creation of a parliamentary investigating committee to look into the firing of Otto Kuester, ousted Commissioner for Indemnification Questions in Baden-Wuerttemberg, has been demanded by Dr. H. G. van Dam, secretary-general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, in a frontpage editorial of the “Allgemeine Wochenzeitung.”

The summary dismissal of this last high-ranking executive willing to take up the cudgels for equitable implementaion of indemnification was officially motivated by Kuester’s alleged “disparagement of the government and of individual ministers,” contained in a personal letter which was made public. Actually, a concerted drive to get rid of Kuester had been under way for a long time. In a personal letter to Professor Franz Boehm, whose deputy he had been in the 1952 German delegation to the reparations negotiations with Israel, Kuester complained about the way in which the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cabinet was handling indemnification matters, and drew attention to the fact that its Finance Minister had been a Nazi Lord Mayor until the very end of the Hitler regime.

The temporary appointment of a respected Jewish jurist to replace Kuester, writes Dr. van Dam, cannot change the fact that Kuester was sacrificed because of his boldness of heart and because of the forthrightness with which he dedicated himself to the attainment of justice. To that end, Kuester, who is the father of seven children, was not deterred by consideration of his own and his family’s future, Dr. van Dam declares.

“Such a man,” concludes the editorial, “deserves our whole-hearted admiration, and should be offered a position in the indemnification field, where his outstanding knowledge of the problem in all its ramifications, and his proven organizational talent, can be brought into play, where he could continue to accomplish in the future the good he has done in the past.”