A resolution requesting West German authorities to accelerate the indemnification process for individual victims of Nazism was adopted here today by a committee of the World Jewish Congress Executive Board. The board is currently holding a four-day, global conference here. The board’s Committee on Indemnification declared, in its resolution, that the West German indemnification program “has been lagging in recent months.”
The resolution also requested West Germany to permit filing of applications for indemnification by victims of Nazi persecutions in Eastern Europe who had failed to meet the German legal deadline of October 1, 1953. Under the German law, only those who were refugees by that date are allowed to file for indemnification. According to the committee, those who have not filed, “through no fault of their own,” should be given extensions. Some of these victims, the committee stated, are still in countries behind the Iron Curtain, where they cannot file claims for indemnifications.
The executive board also heard a report today from its political department about efforts to cleanse dictionaries in some parts of the world from tendentious, anti-Semitic definitions. “A helpful resolution” on that subject, stated the report, was adopted recently by the Congress of National Academies at Bogota, Colombia. The report pointed out also that Brazilian President Janio Quadros has ordered the cleansing of a Portuguese-language dictionary in use in Brazilian public schools.
A report about the launching of a “Get to Know Your Fellow Jews” project in Israel was given the board by Dr. A. Steinberg, of London, director of the WJC cultural department. The project, he said, is designed to acquaint Israeli youth leaders, teachers and others in Israel with “an understanding of Jewish life in the Diaspora, including an adequate understanding of current Jewish life in the Diaspora, in all its aspects, including the historical background of various Jewish communities outside Israel.” Dr. Steinberg reported also about successful seminars held recently for students in Latin America, and about Jewish youth conference organized by the WJC in Europe.
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.
