The lower house of the West German Parliament voted today to extend the deadline for filing applications for individual restitution claims by victims of the Nazis. Action by the upper house is expected within a few days. The present cut off date for application filing is December 31, 1958. The proposed new deadline would be April 1, 1959.
The lag in the processing of indemnification claims by victims of the Nazi regime is causing corruption in the handling of such claims, the press here charged today. The newspapers pointed to recent arrests of officials in the Rhineland-Pfaiz Indemnification Bureau, who were charged with having accepted bribes, and said that this was due to the slowness of handling claims.
Charging that such occurrences provide anti-indemnification forces with ammunition, the press asserted that processing of claims from application to conclusion takes up to 18 months in Bavaria and two years in Northrhine-Westphalia. The newspapers contended that in Rhineland-Pfalz less than half of the budget set aside in the current fiscal year for compensation payments had been spent because of the drag in processing.
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