Today Germany paying pensions to Nazis murders
NDR/PANORAMA Kuno Haberbusch
January 30, 1997
PressRelease
January 30, 1997
PressRelease
PANORAMA: Germany Pays Billions to Nazi WarCriminals
Nazi war criminals officially termed”victims”
Billions of Marks from German taxpayers are beingpaid to Nazi war criminals and are called “victim”pensions. A spokesman for the German Ministry of Laborconfirmed that additional assistance money is beingspent on war criminals but claimed that nothing couldbe changed because of constitutional reasons. Thechairman of Germanys Jewish Community, Ignaz Bubis, wasshocked. He had never thought that “such people” weregetting additional financial payments from the Germangovernment. The PANORAMA report, by Volker Steinhoffand John Goetz, will air on Thursday, January 30, 1997at 9PM on the ARD German television network.
The Nazi war criminals receive in addition to theirregular pensions “victim” pensions, according to theGerman “Social Compensation And Assistance To WarVictims” law (Bundesversorgungsgesetz — BVG). Lastyear alone, from Federal and Lander budgets, almost 13billion Marks was currently paid to over 1.1 million”victim” pensioners. To qualify for the “victim”pension, one must have been injured as a result of warservice. Because no one is excluded from the BVG, eachwar criminal who applies is granted a “victim” pensionif they can simply prove a war injury.
PANORAMA found out that world-wide that numerousNazi war criminals, who today receive monthly paymentsbetween 100 and several thousand Marks from German taxpayers. The well-respected German military historianGerhard Schreiber estimates the number of war criminalsreceiving these extra payments from the Germangovernment at 50,000. Wolfgang Lehnigk-Emden, fromOchtendung near Koblenz, is one of the “victims.” According to a German federal court, Lehnigk-Emdenkilled 15 unarmed women and children in Caiazzo nearNaples in Italy in October 1943. Because Lehnigk-Emdenwas later injured (shot in the leg) while trying toescape from an allied POW camp and suffers a mildhandicap, he receives an additional “victim” pension.
Another current recipient of victim pensions is theformer SS Hauptsturm-fuhrer Wilhelm Mohnke. Mohnke,who was a close confidant of Adolf Hitler andcommandant of the “Fuhrerbunker” in Berlin duringHitler’s last days. According to the US Department ofJustice “there is very substantial evidence pointing toWilhelm Mohnke’s personal involvement in theperpetration of Nazi war crimes” — for his role in themassacre of 72 American POWs in 1944 during the Battleof the Bulge.
War criminals, that live outside of the borders ofGermany, also receive additional monthly “victim”payments from Germany. One of those is the formerAuschwitz lieutenant Thies Christophersen. Christophersen is also one of Germany’s leadingneo-Nazis, whose book “The Auschwitz Lie” is consideredto be “the bible of the Holocaust revisionistmovement,” according to PANORAMA. Christophersen livedin Denmark until 1995 and had his “victim” pensionsforwarded there. The payments to Christophersen wererecently put on hold, as he is a fugitive and theGerman pension authorities do not know where to sendhis money.
Belgian parliament asks Berlin to stop payments to non-Germans who pledged allegiance to Hitler
Nearly 75 years after the second world war, Germany is still paying monthly pensions to collaborators of the wartime Nazi regime in several European countries including Belgium and Britain, according to Belgian MPs and media reports.
The foreign affairs committee of the Belgian parliament this week voted in favour of a resolution urging the German federal government to put an immediate stop to the payments and publish a full list of those receiving them.
“The receipt of pensions for collaborating with one of the most murderous regimes in history is in clear contradiction to the work of remembrance and for peace constituted in the European project,” states the resolution, which was passed unanimously.
The document said nearly 30 people in Belgium are still receiving the payments under a decree by Adolf Hitler granting the same nationality and pension rights as German citizens to foreigners, including Waffen-SS volunteers, from Nazi-occupied territories who pledged “allegiance, fidelity, loyalty and obedience” to the Führer.
German authorities have “consistently refused to communicate the list of pension recipients to their Belgian counterparts, citing legal concerns around the protection of privacy”, according to le Soir newspaper.
The resolution’s authors, five MPs from French-speaking parties, said the monthly payments were made by individual German states and the names of the recipients were known to the German embassy in Brussels.
Responding to the claims, the Germany labour ministry said 18 people in Belgium were receiving war pensions but “there are no former members of the Waffen-SS” among them. It did not name the pensioners or say on what grounds they were entitled to the payments.
Authorities in Belgium were not aware of the pensioners’ identities, the Belgian MPs (Olivier Maingain, Stephane Crusnière, Véronique Caprasse and Daniel Senesael) said, adding that the situation was “the same in the UK, where former SS people also receive payments directly from the German länder [states] without the amounts being taxed or communicated to the British authorities”. The German embassy in London said it did not have any information about the Belgian allegations.
The Belgian state broadcaster, RTBF, said similar payments were also being made in Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. In the Netherlands, historian Cees Kleijn has said war criminals may be among 34 former Nazi collaborators receiving German government pensions, according to the state broadcaster NOS.
Citing the work of a Belgian researcher specialising in the second world war, Alvin de Coninck, RTBF said the payments range from €435 to €1,275 a month, depending on the length of time the recipients – among a total of 80,000 Belgians convicted of various forms of wartime collaboration – had spent in prison after the war.
By contrast, Belgian survivors among the 12 million foreigners from 20 countries who were enrolled in Nazi Germany’s forced labour schemes receive €50.
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