A second round of high-level conferences will open here tomorrow between Dr. Nahum Goldmann, chairman of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and other West German Cabinet members and political party officials, concerning the drafting of the Government’s final law on indemnification and restitution for victims of Nazism.
Dr. Goldmann talked for several days here in January with the Chancellor, Dr. Heinz Starke, Minister of Finance, and other leaders, regarding the new law to replace the indemnification and restitution act of 1952, expiring this year. The talks were inconclusive chiefly because, at that time, Dr. Starke, as a new member of the Cabinet, was not yet fully acquainted with the problems involved. He was also busy at the time preparing his first budget for the fiscal year 1962-63.
The principal issue being advanced by Dr. Goldmann involves the setting up of new categories of German aid recipients, affecting Jews from countries behind the Iron Curtain who could not emerge into the free world until after the cut-off date of October 1, 1953, fixed under the old law. These, according to a statement by Dr. Goldmann, include “tens of thousands” of Jews from Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and some who had spent the war years and the period following the war in refuge in Siberia. Adding these Jewish refugees to the German indemnification and restitution categories will, it is understood, involve additional West German Government expenditures exceeding $1,000,000,000.
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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.