FORMER WAR PRISONERS OF ARMENIAN ORIGIN CLAIM COMPENSATION FROM GERMANY

Several hundred of former soviet war prisoners living in Armenia are going to bring a collective suit to the Supreme Administrative Court of Germany with a claim to recompense them for the slavery work done as former prisoners of fascist Germany, war prisoners’ German lawyer Stephan Taschian told ITAR-TASS agency. He finished the work in the Moscow archives not long ago and now he is in Yerevan to get acquainted with cases of his clients. The suit will be addressed to the German ministry of finance and “Memory, Responsibility and Future” Fund engaged in recompensing the victims of nazism. To note, S. Taschian has already presented the interests of two war prisoners of Armenian origin in the Berlin Administrative Court on similar case. At that time the court rejected the suit alleging the legislation, according to which “being in captivity cannot be a ground for receiving compensation”. Meanwhile, in the opinion of member of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, specialist on the issues of forced work during the Second World War Pavel Polian, the cruelty the soviet war prisoners were treated with gives the reason to consider them as a special category of the victims of nazism.