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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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of whom Lammerding was the worst, quietly went back
home under their real names, were unobtrusively reinstalled in their stratum of
German society, and very frequently got excellent jobs.
France was
aroused and demanded that the German government extradite those criminals. The
Federal Republic replied: "As an occupation power you approved the basic code
that serves as our Constitution. Article 16 states that the Federal Republic
will not extradite its citizens, a principle that is common to most states."
So it was impossible to bring the criminals back to France except
through extradition under international law, but the German government stood
firm on that point.
Then France, which had sinned through negligence,
demanded that the Germans try the war criminals, an apparent violation of the
aforesaid Article 3 of the October 29, 194, Agreement. Hence there was no
prosecution in Germany, and no extradition to France. The 1,026 war criminals
who had been tried in absentia were safe.
The French government then
tried to extricate itself from this legal tangle. It was motivated first by its
own desires, and then by constant pressure from the National Assembly, whose
communist members and former Resistance fighters regularly demanded progress
reports on the negotiations. In spite of French appeals, the Germans refused to
interpret the Agreement as giving them jurisdiction over the
criminals.
The French finally discovered a loophole in a decision of the
German Supreme Court on February 14, 1966, that provided for a possible special
accord between the French government and the German government for the
abolition of all impediments to the exercise of justice. Grudgingly the Bonn
government finally agreed that the German courts did have jurisdiction over the
criminals. All sorts of obstacles greatly delayed the signing of this
supplementary agreement. Neither Adenauer nor Erhard nor Kiesinger really
wanted to settle the matter until the passage of time had placed the criminals
beyond human judgment, as the majority of Germans wished.
The end of
the story is that Willy Brandt made the unpopular decision to acknowledge the
legitimate claims of the French. During his official visit to Paris in January
1971, I met him at the German Embassy on avenue Franklin Roosevelt, when he
held the customary press conference after the conclusion of the Franco-German
talks. I raised my hand:
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
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Page 163 |
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