The Federal Council, upper house of the West German parliament, has given unanimous assent to a modified and slightly improved version of the third implementation regulation to the Federal Indemnification Law for Nazi victims.
Since the State Secretary in the Bonn Finance Ministry has indicated that the government will not object to the improvements, it is expected that the regulation will be in force by early March.
Of the 1,000,000 indemnification claims not yet settled by German government agencies, more than one-fourth derive from effects of Nazi persecution that are dealt with in this third implementation regulation. Its provisions cover economic damage falling within the category “injury to professional advancement,” meaning careers interrupted and cut short by Nazism.
The methods originally proposed by the Federal Government from computing pensions and lump-sum settlements, especially in cases where the Nazi victim was an employee or a professional have been under heavy attack in recent months from the Federal Council of Jews in Germany, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims, the Axis Victims League, and other bodies. The complex arithmetical formulae and technical standards contained in the regulation, the complaints pointed out, would lead to grossly inequitable results.
The modifications introduced by the Federal Council have, to a limited extent, met certain of these objections. Whereas the regulation is still predicated on the hypothetical assumption that the Nazi victim held a German civil service position in a grade “comparable” to his educational background and social status, the civil service pay scales of 1956 have been substituted for those of 1953, which were listed in the original government draft.
Eligibility for pensions is limited to Nazi victims over 65 years old or 50 percent disabled. The maximum pension is $143 monthly, the minimum $24. When the third implementation regulation is formally enacted in a few days, the three most important regulations needed for carrying out the Federal Indemnification Law will be on the books, since regulations governing pensions for widows and orphans, and compensation for those crippled by Nazi maltreatment, entered into effect last November. It is hoped that the new legal measure will serve to expedite the processing of numerous indemnification claims of long standing.
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