An East German Communist official has accused the Bonn authorities of failure to prosecute the judges who served in the notorious Peoples Courts during the Nazi era, pronouncing death sentences on thousands of political prisoners opposed to the Third Reich.
According to Josef Streit, the Chief Prosecutor of East Berlin, his country handed over thousands of documents to the West German authorities identifying former Nazi judges living in West Germany. “But the Bonn authorities erected legal barriers to keep the former Nazi judges from being tried, on grounds that it would not be in line with the principles of international law,” Streit said in an interview with the official East German news agency, ADN.
Streit is a member of the East Berlin Politburo and as such is active in an ongoing propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting the Federal Republic. But his charges touched on a sensitive and much discussed issue in West Germany. Despite persistent efforts by anti-Nazi activists, the Bonn government has made no serious attempt to prosecute the dozens of former Nazi judges estimated to be living in the country.
Gerhard Meyer, when he was Justice Minister in West Berlin three years ago, prepared a list of former and sitting judges who had served in the Peoples Courts. The list contained the names of 34 judges who imposed death sentences on anti-Nazis and are currently living in West Germany. The records of another 34 judges and 117 prosecutors are still under review.
CORRECTION
In the interview with Robert Arnow in the Daily News Bulletin of May 26, Mr. Arnow should have been quoted as saying that a vine-ripened tomato, grown with brackish water, in experiments at Ben Gurion University, has a shelf-life of up to six weeks.
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.
