International Resistance Veterans’ Organisations in the Debate on Limitation in 1965

Split along the political lines of the Cold War, associations of former political persecutees such as the communist-dominated International Federation of Resistance Fighters (FIR) and the anti-communist International Union of Resistance and Deportation (UIRD) were important transnational social actors with connections on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In the first half of the 1960s, legal aspects of the criminal prosecution of war criminals—especially the imminent limitation—became one of the most important topics for them. This chapter analyses the survivors’ participation in this debate and considers its transnational dimensions. It follows the arguments of the survivors’ organisations by asking how they used the memory of Nazi crimes and the Holocaust and analyses the conflicts between pro- and anti-communist organisations.