German Catholic Church finds evidence it used forced labor in Nazi era

BERLIN (Reuters) -- Germany's Roman Catholic Church said Thursday there was evidence it might have used forced laborers during the Third Reich and it would now decide whether to pay into a compensation fund for Nazi victims.

"Research in various (Catholic) Church organizations have provided initial evidence that forced laborers may have been used," Rudolf Hammerschmidt, a spokesman for the German Bishops' Conference, told Reuters.

Bishops from the German dioceses would discuss at their regular meeting on August 28 whether to pay into a $4.7 billion fund for surviving victims around the world recently set up the German government and industry, he said.

The Protestant Church, Germany's other main denomination, last week formally acknowledged that it used forced labor under Hitler's regime, when both churches were subject to severe oppression. It pledged to pay almost $5 billion into the fund.

But the Roman Catholic Church has until now said it had no evidence in its central archives that it drew on an army of up to 10 million forced laborers sent to Germany from across Europe and made to toil for the Nazi war effort.

However, it has acknowledged there may have been individual cases of local parish priests using forced labor for tasks such as grave-digging.

The Bishops' Conference was responding to an ARD television program late Wednesday which outlined the case of a Bavarian monastery where a Polish couple and their two children worked alongside 19 French and 16 Russian prisoners-of-war.

Hammerschmidt said it was likely that the Polish family were used as forced labor, adding the church was investigating this case and would examine others in parishes in Berlin and Paderborn.

Christa Nickels, religious affairs spokeswoman for junior coalition government partners the Greens, said the Church should immediately pay into the fund.

"The correct thing to do is for the Church to pay into the fund. It's not about when, where and how many forced labourers were used, but whether the two main churches were involved in the system," Nickels said in an interview in Friday's Frankfurter Rundschau, released ahead of publication.

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