New Reichstag Fire Trial Sought

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32018, 19 June 1969, Page 17

New Reichstag Fire Trial Sought

(N.Z.P.A .-Reuter—Copyright;

NEW YORK, June 18. A United States lawyer said yesterday that he had been commissioned to seek a reopening of the 1933 Reichstag fire trial in Germany which ended with the execution of a Dutchman, Mr Marinus Van der Lubbe. The fire, which destroyed a part of the German Parliament building, is widely believed to have been engineered by the Nazis. Dr Robert M. W. Kempner, a German-born international lawyer who served as United States deputy chief counsel for war crimes at the Nuremburg trials immediately after World War 11, said that he had been retained by Mr

Markus van der Lubbe, of Amsterdam, a brother of the executed man. Mr van der Lubbe seeks to clear his brother’s name. He believes his brother was wrongly convicted and that the Nazis used the fire to start a reign of terror against their enemies. Dr Kempner, aged 69, one of the few United States lawyers who is also a member of the German bar, interrogated the Nazi leader, Herman Goering, about the Reichstag fire soon after the war. Goering was president of the Reichstag in 1933. The lawyer said that later this year he would apply for a retrial to the West German Supreme Court at Karlsruhe, which he described as the successor to the pre-war German Supreme Court in Leipzig. He also planned to publish advertisements offering rewards for information.