West Germany’s law fixing January 1, 1970, as the new deadling for prosecution of Nazi war criminals for murder was assailed today by the Belgian Union of Jewish Former Resistance Fighters as “an infamous decision.”
The organization made its protest in a letter to the West German Ambassador here, saying its members were “deeply shocked” by the action. The new law extended by four and a half years the prior cut-off date for such prosecution, which had been May 8.
The organization said it was “protesting energetically” with all other resistance fighters and victims of Nazism the “intolerable act which, in fact, is a postponed amnesty.” The group called the extension an “enormous fraud intended to abuse world public opinion.” It declared that the act extended to “war criminals responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity the benefit of a statute of limitations against prosecution.”
The organization called the act a profanation of the memory of millions of victims of Nazism and a provocation toward all men of goodwill. It added that it considered the extension “illegal and will, together with all Belgian patriots, engage in an implacable struggle against it.”
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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.
