Murder Will Out

After seven hours of intense debate, West Germany's Bundestag last week voted, 253 to 228, to abolish the statute of limitation on murder that would have made it impossible for the Federal Republic to prosecute newly uncovered Nazi war killers after Dec. 31. The vote was a triumph for Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Justice Minister Hans-Jochen Vogel, who had led the parliamentary fight to lift the 30-year time limit. Said Vogel: "After Auschwitz, there can be no statute of limitation for murder in Germany."

Advocates of keeping the statute had argued that most crimes had been detected or dealt with, and that future convictions of Nazi killers would become increasingly difficult because of faulty memories, witnesses' deaths, and lack of evidence. Of the 85,802 people investigated in connection with war crimes since 1945, only 6,440 have been convicted, and only 166 received the maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Opponents of the present law were afraid that some of the several thousand Nazi criminals in hiding abroad might escape justice. There has been international pressure on the Bundestag, particularly from Jews around the world, to abolish the statute of limitation, but television played its part as well. After the U.S. series Holocaust was shown on West German TV, a poll showed a striking increase in the number of people approving a change in the law.

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