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Soviet prisoners of war filing lawsuit to demand compensations

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  • Soviet prisoners of war filing lawsuit to demand compensations

    ITAR-TASS News Agency
    TASS
    May 3, 2004 Monday

    Soviet prisoners of war filing lawsuit to demand compensations

    By Olga Fronina

    MOSCOW

    Several hundred former Soviet prisoners of war are considering a
    class suit to Germany's Supreme Administrative Court with a demand to
    make them eligible for the compensations that the German government
    pays to the former forced toilers of the Third Reich, a lawyer
    representing the POWs said.

    "The class suit will be filed in May on behalf of several hundred
    POWs now living in Armenia," said Stefan Taschian, the lawyer.

    In April he completed work in Moscow archives and is now in getting
    familiarized with the documents on his clients in Yerevan.

    The lawsuit will be addressed to the German Finance Ministry and the
    fund that pays out money to the victims of Nazism.

    This is not the first time that Taschian is handling such suits. Last
    year, he represented the interests of two former POWs trying to get
    the compensations as other categories of Nazi convicts in a Berlin
    court.

    The lawsuit was rejected, however, with the judges saying German
    legislation did not regard the former POWs as a category eligible for
    compensations.

    German officials insist that all the issues pertaining to the POWs
    were settled back in 1953 by the London agreement on debts and by
    agreements on reparations.

    These documents stipulate that only the POWs, whom the Nazis
    transferred to the category of civilian convicts, can aspire to
    reparations.

    Taschian said in this context that a group of Italians, who had filed
    a suit simultaneously with his clients, had won a verdict for
    compensation.
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