At the Berlin Memorial for European Jewish Victims of WWII.

(illustration) -

TOBIAS SCHWARZ / AFP

Germany wants to rid its laws and regulations of the last vestiges of Nazism, more than 75 years after the end of the Third Reich.

There are in fact still 29 legal or regulatory texts dating from the regime of Adolf Hitler (1933-1945) and never deleted since, deplores Angela Merkel's government commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism.

Some of these texts, however, had a "very clear anti-Semitic background", deplores Felix Klein.

Felix Klein's goal, supported by several parties in the Bundestag, is to achieve a complete clean-up, if possible before the end of the legislature in September.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer himself said he was in favor.

The question of the adoption of a single law reforming all the texts concerned or of piecemeal changes remains to be resolved.

The most emblematic case is the law on the change of names and surnames.

Late denazification

Promulgated in January 1938, this law paved the way for a decree from the Nazi Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick obliging from January 1, 1939 “Jewish men and women to add the first names Israel and Sara respectively to their official first names” , recalls Felix Klein.

This "'law on the change of surnames and first names' was of capital importance for the exclusion and deprivation of rights of Jews," said Thorsten Frei, vice-chairman of the conservative CDU-CSU group in the Bundestag.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that in 2021, the Nazi language continues to shape our federal law," said Helge Lindh, head of the Social Democratic group in the Home Affairs Committee of the Bundestag.

"It was high time to send a clear signal through this form of late denazification," he said.

This law on name changes is the most emblematic, but there are at least 28 other texts dating from the Nazi era.

Helge Lindh even lists around forty.

The law on non-medical practitioners, which regulates part of medical practice, dates from 1939. An ordinance on casinos has continued to apply since 1938.

Already several laws repealed in the past

Germany has already repealed laws dating back to Nazism, such as in 1994 the criminalization of homosexual relations or, in 2019, a text prohibiting doctors from announcing that they perform abortion.

Although adopted four years after the capitulation of May 8, 1945, the Basic Law, the pillar of democratic Germany, has also been in the crosshairs for several years, especially on the left.

Its detractors call for the revision of article 3 of the Constitution in which the term "race" appears.

Angela Merkel said herself open there in June 2020.

Ironically, the reverse process takes place in the far-right movement, with the return to favor of terms and invectives, long taboo, straight from the Nazi era.

Anti-migrant demonstrations or, more recently, anti-masks, thus take up the term “traitors to the fatherland” (Volksverräter in German), popularized by Hitler.

The "lying press", stigmatized by the Nazis, is also the target of gibes in these parades.

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