Robert Kempner, the U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, has urged the Bonn government to remove from the criminal records, anti-Nazi Germans convicted by the notorious Peoples Courts during the 12 year tenure of the Third Reich. The courts sentenced thousands of anti-Nazis to death and others to long prison terms. But these people are still officially registered as "criminals" in several West German states.
Kempner called on the Bundestag to pass legislation deleting the names of those whose only crime was opposition to the Nazi state. He said such a gesture was long overdue, especially for a legislative body which has been urging the release of one-time deputy fuhrer Rudolph Hess from Spandau prison and the release of other convicted Nazi war criminals serving sentences in Holland and Italy.
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