Representatives of all German organizations of Nazi victims met in the offices of the Central Council of Jews in Germany to hammer out a unified policy toward the amendment of the Federal Indemnification Law which is now being considered by a special parliamentary committee. The meeting agreed on a number of changes to be urged upon the committee.
The conference, which was presided over by Dr. H. G. van Dam, secretary-general of the Central Council, was attended by indemnification experts from the League of Nazi Victims, the Association of Nazi Victims, the League for Freedom and Human Dignity, the persecutee sections of the Social Democratic Party and of the German Trade Union Federation. The provisions of the pending amendment are of vital significance not only to Jews but also to Germans who, because of their opposition to Nazism, served jail sentences, were thrown into concentration camps, lost their positions or suffered other injuries.
In Bielefeld, a four and one-half year jail sentence has been imposed by a local German court, after an eight-week trial, upon a Nazi attorney who after the war specialized in representing Jewish clients in restitution suits and then swindled them out of the property returned to them. Dr. Rudolf Grosse-Hagenbrock had been manager of a Nazi legal office in Westphalian Nazi Party headquarters during the Hitler era. In 1949, when he was again admitted to the bar in the city of Guetersloh, he solicited Jewish clients now living abroad, whose restitution suits were pending in the area. Once he had obtained their power of attorney, he defrauded them in many ways. He has been disbarred.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
