Payments to victims of Nazism under Germany’s indemnification legislation is actually decreasing, Allgemeine Zeitung, a Jewish paper, charged today.
The newspaper said that while total payments to victims came to 470,000,000 deutschemarks in the third quarter of 1957, they dropped to 413,000,000 in the first quarter of 1958 and still lower to 398,000,000 in the second quarter of this year.
Computing that a total of 240,000,000,000 marks would eventually be paid out on account of war losses and damages, Allgemeine Zeitung said that only 20,000,000,000 would go to victims of Nazi repression, torture and murder as a result of both the indemnification laws and the reparations treaty with Israel.
(In Britain today, the Manchester Guardian, commenting on the compensation situation, noted that German law courts are “becoming more expert in finding reasons for reducing payment, and not only are they turning down an ever greater percentage of claims, but they are dealing with fewer claims as time goes on.”)
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