Germany signs agreement to compensate Nazi slave laborers

Some criticize deal as too little, too late

July 17, 2000
Web posted at: 10:31 p.m. EDT (0231 GMT)

In this story: American lawyers had threatened lawsuits East accuses West of strong-arm tactics RELATED STORIES, SITES

BERLIN (CNN) -- Germany took an unprecedented step on Monday, signing an historic agreement that will create a 10 billion mark ($4.8 billion) fund to compensate hundreds of thousands of people used as slaves or forced laborers in the Nazi Germany of World War II.

Representatives of the United States, eastern Europe and Israel, and a group of American lawyers joined the Germans to ink the agreement, the product of 18 months of tense negotiations.

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"(The restitution payments) can't undo the suffering that the victims went through, and unfortunately it also comes too late for many," said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer at the Berlin signing ceremony. "Germany learned many things about itself and its past during the negotiation process, and openly discussed what had been suppressed all too willingly and successfully for a long time."

The German government has agreed to provide half the 10 billion marks for the fund, with the other half coming from German industry, which has already pledged about 3.2 billion marks ($1.6 billion) from more than 3,000 companies.

Since 1953, West Germany -- and then Germany after unification of East and West Germany in 1990 -- has paid more than 104 billion marks ($60 billion) in restitution for Nazi crimes.

"This agreement does not end moral responsibility for the Holocaust," said chief U.S. negotiator Stuart Eizenstat, the U.S. deputy Treasury secretary. "Nothing can erase the memory of those who died or the culture and potential achievements lost or the suffering of those who survived."

But, he added: "It does help to heal wounds left open during the lifetime of many of the survivors."

American lawyers had threatened lawsuits

The negotiations were prompted by the threat of class-action lawsuits from the United States.

"We must be frank," Eizenstat said. "It was American lawyers and the lawsuits they brought in U.S. courts who placed the long-forgotten wrongs by German companies during the Nazi era on the international agenda."

A second document signed by Germany and the United States is aimed at protecting Germany against any more such lawsuits.

The compensation fund provides for payments of up to 15,000 marks ($7,000) to slave laborers -- those meant to be worked to death in labor camps but survived -- and about 5,000 marks ($2,400) for forced laborers, whose working conditions were less severe.

"Finally we have a victory, not only morally but also in a material sense," said 79-year-old Karl Horace, a Czech survivor of a forced labor camp who attended Monday's ceremony.

Germany joins Swiss banks UBS and Credit Sues, Germany's Evangelical Church, Austria and others in agreeing to pay restitution for Nazi crimes.

U.S. President Bill Clinton commended the creation of the fund, calling the move an "important and generous act" that will "bring comfort and some measure of justice to surviving victims of the Nazi era."

"It is a fitting capstone to the 20th century, and a cornerstone for a 21st century of peace and tolerance. I welcome the signing of this historic agreement, and commend the German government and companies for their responsibility and courage," Clinton said.

East accuses West of strong-arm tactics

But not everyone saw the agreement in the same light. Many agreed with Fischer that it was too late for too many, particularly eastern Europeans who have long gotten the short end of the restitution stick.

"Everyone is not satisfied," said Russian official Anatoly Ivanov.

Bartosz Jalowiecki, the head of the Polish agency administering German restitution, said that eastern and central Europe, despite suffering the war's greatest manpower and material losses, received only about 1 percent of past payments.

And Markiyan Demidov, head of Ukraine's Union of Victims, accused the West of bullying Eastern nations into accepting the deal.

"In Washington they said, 'If you don't like it, we're going to sign anyway,'" Demidov said. "They forced us to accept it. The amounts are a joke, an insult to Germany."

But Gideon Taylor, executive vice president of the Claims Conference -- which has been negotiating with Germany for Holocaust restitution for 57 years -- said that those who suffered during the Holocaust could never truly be compensated.

"So any sum of money a person is going to get is never going to be enough," he said. "Whatever the payment will be, it's not compensation. It can't be. It's symbolic."

CNN Correspondent Rym Brahimi, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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