German officials of the State of Wuerttemberg seem to be planning to get rid of Dr. Otto Kuester, one of the highest placed friends in Germany of Jewry and of Israel, as Commissioner of Indemnification for Wuerttemberg, it was learned here today.
Dr. Kuester’s resignation as deputy chief of the German team of negotiators at The Hague together with a public blast at Bonn officials who were blocking an agreement with Israel and the Jewish Claim Conference, has been credited with helping push through the German-Israel reparations pact. During the past year he voiced trenchant criticisms of the Federal legislation to indemnify individual Jewish victims of the Nazis.
In an apparent attempt to force Dr. Kuester out of office, Wuerttemberg Premier Reinhold Mueller has introduced legislation redesigning the restitution and indemnification set-up in the state in such a fashion as to reduce Dr. Kuester’s functions and authority to such a state that he will be forced to resign as a matter of self-respect. This new strategy seems to have replaced a former attempt to secure his outright dismissal.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
