80 years ago, in March 1953, the German Bundestag approved the agreement reached with Israel and the Jewish Claims Conference the year before Luxembourg Weather Compensation Agreement. It was the prelude to the federal German ‘compensation’ for the victims of the Shoah, which in 1956 Federal Law on Compensation for Victims of National Socialist Persecution followed.
The compensation payments were initially rather hesitant and it was not uncommon for the applicants to have to fight for a long time to receive adequate benefits. Many therefore sought the support of knowledgeable lawyers.
Extensive files were created during the often lengthy compensation proceedings, in which the victims often provided detailed information about their persecution. While the state compensation files are mostly well preserved, the files of the lawyers involved in the proceedings have rarely been preserved. On this evening, the archive of the Munich labor movement presents the files of the Munich lawyer and social democrat Konrad Kittl (1931-2015) and shows the possibilities that they offer for the reconstruction of the life stories of Shoah victims from Germany and Eastern Europe as well as for historical educational work offer.
