The German Parliament’s Committee for Labor and Social Affairs has decided to withdraw pensions from former SS veterans living outside Germany if they participated in crimes against humanity.
According to a German government official, 414 such veterans in the former Soviet Union have received German pensions for decades.
In changing this policy, the Ministry of Labor will actually be applying an old regulation. never used before, which forbids such benefits.
Most of these SS veterans are in the Baltic states and are suspected of taking part in massacres or in serving in concentration camps in Ukraine.
A parliament member from the Green Party, Gunther Saathoff, has demanded that this regulation also be applied to SS veterans living in Germany.
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