Closing the Loophole

By a unanimous vote, the Bundesrat, the upper house of the West German Parliament, last week passed a law clos ing the legal loophole through which as-yet-undetected German war criminals would have escaped punishment. Under the old law, war criminals who had not been caught and indicted by next Dec. 31 would have been immune from future prosecution. The new law renders them liable to prosecution for another ten years. It also lifts entirely the statute of limitations on genocide, thus subjecting the perpetrators of the most heinous Nazi crimes to possible punishment as long as they live.

The law represents a compromise be tween West Germany's two major political parties over how to cope with the burden of the Nazi past. Arguing that the German people can only expiate their national guilt by bringing the wartime offenders to jus tice, the Socialists favored abolishing the statute of limitations on all forms of mur der, including even homicide by civilians in peacetime.

That would have ensured that no war criminal could ever be legally exempt from prosecution.

Until 1980. Three months ago, after the "Grand Coalition" Cabinet adopted the Socialist view, a revolt broke out in the ranks of the Chris tian Democrats. It was led by Finance Minister Franz Josef Strauss's Bavarian branch of the party. The Bavarians, who argue that it is time to restrict the search for war criminals to major offenders, demanded a so-called "differentiated approach." It would treat the criminals who gave the orders for genocide and massacres far more severely than those who carried them out or were involved in lesser crimes. Fearing that he would be outflanked by Strauss, his main rival, Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger went along with the Bavarians. So did the rest of the party. Faced with the new position of their senior partners in the coalition, the Socialists had no practical alternative except to agree to a compromise solution. Both parties wanted to get the law passed before September's national elections in order to prevent the rightist National Democrats, who favor an end to war crime trials, from making a campaign issue of it.

According to official Bonn estimates, there are 10,000 to 16,000 undetected war criminals at large in West Germany. Those who have not been caught by 1980 under the new extension will almost assuredly be dead of old age or too infirm to stand trial in any case.

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