독일의 과거청산 ― 시효와 재심을 중심으로 ―

This essay reports the purge of Nazi Establishment and the prior Communist Regime of East Germany. Hitler’s regime left behind ruins of mass killing, genocide and war crimes unprecedented in history. Hitler promulgated a lot of cruel, wicked act which later were defined as “gesetzliches Unrecht(legal injustice)” by G. Radbruch. Nazi Regime officially harass, arrest and send the jews to concentration camp according to the Nuremberg racist laws. Under the third Empire, special courts like Volksgerichtshof or SS-Standegericht pronounced incredibly atrocious sentences which are considered to be summary execution. Therefore, German legal philosophers and historians named Volksgeichtshof “Gerichtshof des Teufels(court of devil)”. After the second war, the allied control council annihilated the major Nazi enactments and special courts, and took special measures to reverse the judicial decision of Nazi courts. The allied countries, furthermore, punished the major war criminals, but left with impunity the Nazi judges who committed murders or crimes in the form of judicial decision. After the end of the military occupation, German government adopted twice special acts to overcome the aporia of the statutory limitation which obstructed punishment of the war criminals. German government laid down the inclusive special act of 1998 which abolishes the 58 Nazi acts and the unjust judicial decisions based upon those acts. In the same way, German government annihilated the political justices and persecution of political crimes under the SED-regime.