Jewish Congress Says Bundestag Decision is ‘disappointing’

A national leader of the American Jewish Congress today assailed West Germany’s extension by four and a half years of its statute of limitations on Nazi war crimes as “disappointing and wholly inadequate.” Marcus Ginsburg, of Houston, Tex., chairman of the Commission of International Affairs of the Jewish Congress, termed the statute’s extension from May 8 of this year through the end of 1969 “a scandalous affront to the millions of men, women and children destroyed by the Hitler regime.”

“This minimal extension cannot be reconciled with the towering moral obligation of the German people to insure that all those who took part in the atrocities of the Nazi era are apprehended and brought to justice,” he said. “The action today makes it tragically clear that there is still no proper recognition by the German people of their responsibilities. It represents merely a grudging and reluctant yielding to world opinion. The extension of the statute by over four years does not assure the prosecution of the many war criminals still in hiding.”