Nasi Victims Deprived of $100, 000, 000 in Payments by Bonn ‘mistake’

Victims of Nazism, most of them Jews, were short-changed by about $100, 000, 000 in the last 10 years through a German Government “error,” it was revealed here today. Most of the “mistake” consisted of deducting from their restitution chocks a percentage charged to income taxes — whereas the law specifically exempts restitution income from federal taxes.

In addition, many of the payments were illegally “rounded off” downward, and the pensions paid were not increased by the same percentages by which civil service scales had been raised. The law links the restitution payments to the percentage increases given to civil scales. The “error, ” it is estimated here, had reduced the payments made to victims of Nazism by about 12 percent.

All of these “errors” were disclosed at a meeting of the representatives of the German laender (provinces) at the Bundesrat, the upper house of the German Parliament. Indirect confirmation of the charges of “error” were seen here today in the fact that the Bundesrat has been given by the Government the task of formulating a new decree that would raise individual restitution payments by sums ranging from 12 percent to 50 percent — depending on income — retroactive to September 1, 1965.

The Bundesrat is expected to act on the proposed decree this week. The increases would cost the Government $30, 000, 000 for restitution recipients on the rolls prior to last September. Additional payments, estimated at between $10, 000, 000 and $20, 000, 000 would benefit restitution recipients covered by recent legislation.

Martin Hirsch, a Social Democrat member of the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament, has openly denounced the “error. ” Furthermore, he has alleged that Chancellor Ludwig Erhard has declined to rectify the mistake, and called this alleged failure a “scandal. ” Mr. Hirsch is one of the country’s foremost experts on restitution problems. He was chairman of the Bundestag’s restitution committee until that body was abolished last fall.

One angle of this development considered piquant by most observers here, is the fact that the mistake was discovered not by the Finance Ministry but by a low-echelon employe of the Ministry of Defense. The man who found the error is said to be a half-Jew. There are reports that he was threatened with dismissal from his job when he tried to bring the “error” into the open, but was saved from firing by the personal intervention of former Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, to whom he had appealed.