The BHE refugee party, two of whose leaders are members of Chancellor Adenauer’s Cabinet, has called for unconditional repeal of the legal provision that bars Gestapo torturers and a few leading Nazis from civil service rights.
Shortly after the war, officials with a record of Nazi sympathies and activity were dismissed or not re-employed. Under present practice they are entitled to reinstatement and full pension, unless they were professional members of the Nazi secret police — Gestapo and the “SD” Security Service — or classified as top Nazis by the lenient denazification boards.
The BHE refugee party now demands that these Nazi bigshots and Gestapo men be reinstated in positions commensurate with their experience. If no such position is available at the moment, they would nonetheless be entitled to full pay in their grades. National chairman of the BHE party is Theodor Oberlaender, now Federal Minister for Refugees, in former days a Nazi Party member, Storm Troop officer and national leader of the Nazi “League for a German Eastern Europe.”
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