Few Nazi crimes suspects lost pensions, review reveals

FILE - The 1942 file photo shows Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich in an unknown location sometime in 1942. Lina Heydrich, the widow of assassinated Heydrich, one of the main architects of the Holocaust, was among the most prominent recipients of pensions for “victims of war” who were injured in World War II. (AP Photo) (The Associated Press)

BERLIN – Germany stopped disability payments to only several dozen Nazi war crimes suspects despite passing a law that was expected to remove payments to tens of thousands.

An official review, commissioned by the Labor Ministry and released Tuesday, concludes that several factors led to the poor success rate, including the sheer scale of the task reviewing tens of thousands of cases, the lack of digitalization of key files, legal challenges and, in some cases, apathy in implementing the law.

When the law was passed in 1998, the expectation was that it would result in some 50,000 people losing their pensions, but the report reveals that to date only 99 have been revoked.

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, says "the results are incredibly disappointing."