Member of Adenauer’s Cabinet Attacks German-israel Pact

A severe attack on the German-Israel reparations pact was made at the national convention of the German Party here by Dr. Hans-Christoph Seebohm, Federal Minister of Transport and deputy chairman of the party, which is the right-wing of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s governmental coalition.

This is the first time that a member of Dr. Adenauer’s Cabinet has publicly launched so fierce an onslaught on the German-Israel agreement. He said that his party was dissatisfied with the character and scope of the agreement.

At the convention, which sounded the keynote for the Parliamentary election campaign, the German Party also went on record as opposed to the law for indemnification of victims of Nazi persecution unless former German prisoners of war are also paid indemnification. The law to compensate Nazi victims, which the Bonn Government has repeatedly undertaken to expedite, is about to be introduced in Parliament.

The German Party’s election platform calls for immediate and sweeping rehabilitation of all former Nazis and, by contrast, for a thoroughgoing screening of all non-Nazi officials appointed in the postwar era. Former members of the military S.S. should be eligible for pensions, the platform also demands. In this connection, the chairman of the German Party in Bremen, H. Schneider attacked aspersions on the military SS., “most of whose members fought just as honorably as the other German soldiers.”

Minister Seebohm caused the Allied High Commission to protest to the Federal Government in December 1951 by stating in a public speech that he “bows in homage before any symbol under which Germans have given their lives,” including of course the swastika.