|
Frank Buscher, “’I Know I Also Share
the Guilt’: A Retrospective of the West German Parliament’s 1965
Debate on the Statute of Limitations for Murder”
In March 1965 the West German parliament debated the
approaching expiration of the statute of limitations for the murders
of the Hitler regime. By this time, all other Nazi crimes, including
manslaughter, were already statute-barred. During the Federal
Republic’s first decade, when the government’s emphasis had been on
integrating rather than prosecuting former National Socialists, the
Bundestag failed to make the necessary changes in the law. In the
early 1960s attitudes began to change, particularly among some young
and educated Germans. Consisting of individuals with varying
political backgrounds, this group concluded that Federal Republic
officials had not done enough, throughout the 1950s, to bring the
perpetrators to justice despite the overwhelming evidence regarding
the extent of the Nazis’ murderous programs and atrocities.
Confronted with foreign pressure and concerned with the essence of
the Rechtsstaat (nation of laws), several lawmakers resolved
to prevent the scheduled expiration of the murder statute in 1965
and introduced the necessary legislation. The intense, emotional
debates that followed are generally considered to rank among the
best in the Bundestag’s history. In the end, however, the
legislators settled for an unsatisfactory compromise, which soon
overshadowed any good impressions produced by the debates. |
