The leader of West Germany’s Jewish community said he is not satisfied with the investigation of the Werner Nachmann embezzlement scandal.
Heinz Galinski said he believes the investigation should be pursued without bias to expose possible accomplices, whether they be Jews or non-Jews.
Nachmann, who was chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany for 20 years until his sudden death last January, was found to have misappropriated up to $20 million provided by the Bonn government to pay restitution to Jewish Holocaust survivors.
Galinski discovered the malfeasance shortly after he took office as Nachmann’s successor.
Speaking to a West German radio station in an interview last week, Galinski said that family members and close associates of Nachmann “must have had at least some knowledge” of what happened.
He said he would leave it to the state prosecution to clear up the question of accomplices.
“We are all co-responsible in a moral sense, because we had too much confidence” in Nachmann, Galinski said.
Nachmann, a wealthy industrialist with good connections in government, was a pillar of the community. “Nobody had the slightest suspicion that he would steal money that was to go to victims of the Holocaust,” Galinski said.
He praised the West German media for its unsensational coverage of the affair and for not using the scandal to launch an anti-Semitic campaign.
Galinski said some elements in the country would try to use the scandal to incite anti-Jewish feelings, but they would do so even if no Jews lived in Germany and there had been no Nachmann scandal.
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