On Thursday, a German administrative court rejected the lawsuit filed by Hermann Lüdeking, who as a child was kidnapped by the Germans in occupied Poland and germanized. In the court’s opinion, a man who wanted to be awarded compensation is not a victim of Nazism, and he is not entitled to any compensation. After the verdict was announced, the man was also ordered to pay the costs of the trial – 2,500 euro.
The case is described on the website of the German newspaper “Badische-Zeitung”. It is reported that Lüdeking has never met his parents, nor does he know where he was born, because the Germans kidnapped him when he was only a child. The man does not know his real name or even the date of his birth.
Lüdeking as a pensioner, he began to enquire about his past. In 2017, the man decided to sue the Federal Republic of Germany and demanded a symbolic, one-time payment of compensation in the amount of 2.500 euro.
In June 2018, an administrative court in Cologne rejected the man’s suit, justifying the verdict by the lack of legal grounds for paying the claim. The court did not qualify the man as a victim of the Nazi regime.
The case went to appeal. On Thursday, it was considered by the Higher Administrative Court in Münster, which again rejected the plaintiff’s claim.
