U.S. Jewish Groups Honor Prof Boehm; Fighter for Nazi Victims

Professor Franz Boehm, a distinguished member of the West German Parliament and one of the foremost champions of German laws to compensate Nazi victims, was today honored by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany at a luncheon at the Hotel Roosevelt. He will be presented tomorrow with the Stephen S. Wise Award at the convention of the American Jewish Congress which opened here today.

Prof. Boehm disclosed at the luncheon today that the Bonn Parliament is expected to enact a new indemnification law within a few weeks which will substantially enlarge the benefits granted to Nazi victims by the German Federal Republic. He expressed regret that the forthcoming law will not cover all of the claimant groups whose cause the Claims Conference had pressed so urgently, and stressed the need for implementing the German indemnification laws “My German friends and I will not rest, however,” he pledged, “until the rightful claims to which persecutees are entitled have been fulfilled.”

Presiding at the luncheon was Moses A. Leavitt, treasurer of the Claims Conference and a leader of the Claims Conference delegation which conducted negotiations at The Hague in 1952 with the representative of the German Federal Republic. headed by Professor Boehm. “It was the courageous stand which Prof Boehm, as the German delegation head, took during a critical interval in the negotiations,” Mr. Leavitt stressed, “which did so much to make possible the compensation agreements for the benefit of needy Nazi victims which resulted.”

Benjamin B. Ferencz, Claims Conference representative in Germany during the past three years, stressed the important role which Prof. Boehm, as a key member of the Bonn Parliamentary Committee for Indemnification is playing in legislative matters affecting the interests of Nazi victims! “His forthright integrity in Parliamentary deliberations on these issues is an invaluable influence,” Mr. Ferencz stated. Professor Boehm had been suspended from his teaching position at the University of Jena between the years 1968-45 for his outspoken opposition to the anti-Jewish measures which the Nazi regime had imposed.