Problem with COPY on RedHat 8 with PostgreSQL 7.3.2

I am facing an error I haven't seen in my entire life.
I am running a simple set of COPY statements:

BEGIN TRANSACTION;
DELETE FROM t_artikel_attribut WHERE lief_nr = '9060';
COPY t_artikel_attribut (art_attr_id, a_code_lief, art_attr,
bearb_dat, bearb_usr, lief_nr) FROM stdin DELIMITER ';'
NULL AS 'NULL';
\.
DELETE FROM t_artikel WHERE lief_nr = '9060';
COPY t_artikel (art_nr_lief, kurz_text, lang_text, vp_einh, vp_menge,
vp_druck, bearb_dat, bearb_usr,
index_num, index_txt, info_txt,
lief_nr, prodcode)
FROM stdin DELIMITER ';' NULL AS 'NULL';
703462;HEIßKLEBEPISTOLE PKP 30LE;Art.Nr.: 703462 HEIßKLEBEPISTOLE PKP
30LE;Stk;1;Stk;2003-04-27
12:05:25.200928+02;jp;NULL;NULL;NULL;9060;9060703462
703441;SCHLAGBOHRMASCHINE PSB 1200-2R;Art.Nr.: 703441 SCHLAGBOHRMASCHINE
PSB 1200-2R;Stk;1;Stk;2003-04-27
12:05:25.613064+02;jp;NULL;NULL;NULL;9060;9060703441
703471;HEISSLUFTGEBLÄSE PHG 530-2;Art.Nr.: 703471 HEISSLUFTGEBLÄSE PHG
530-2;Stk;1;Stk;2003-04-27
12:05:25.637054+02;jp;NULL;NULL;NULL;9060;9060703471
.
.
.

What I am doing is DELETE -> COPY into serveral tables. The problem is:
It seemed to work pretty fine up to now but now PostgreSQL stops in the
middle of the COPY command. The CPU load goes down to zero but the
process stays alive. When I press CTRL + C the command line isn't
blocked anymore but the COPY command starts to work as a background
process again (100% CPU load).

hs(at)shoppingnet tmp]$ psql sn1 < K9060.sql

How can a process I have killed with CTRL + C START working? In my
opinion it should die :(.
Did anybody encounter similar problems on RedHat 8? It looks like some
hardware failure to me.

Also, I had some

NOTICE: Rel pg_artikel: Uninitialized page 74 - fixing
NOTICE: Rel pg_artikel: Uninitialized page 75 - fixing

before ...

Is it a bug or a hardware problem?

Hans