Austria signs landmark slave labour deal

By Alexandra Foederl-Schmid

VIENNA, Austria -- Austria has signed a landmark agreement to compensate the wartime victims of Nazi forced labour.

The ceremony in Vienna on Tuesday was attended by Austrian Government leaders and representatives from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and concluded eight months of negotiations.

Speaking at the ceremony, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat praised Austria's recent efforts to come to terms with its Nazi past.

Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany and did not exist as an independent state from 1938 to 1945

"Let me be clear. The labour agreement we sign today is historic," Eizenstat said at a ceremony in the Vienna chancellery.

However, the U.S. urged Austria to complete the "unfinished moral business." "It is an important step in Austria's facing its past courageously. But it is not, in the view of the United States, the final step which needs to be taken," Eizenstat said.

"The larger task cannot be complete until victims' representatives and the Austrian Government and Austrian companies have reached agreement on further measures to adequately address Nazi-era property confiscations."

Also attending the ceremony were victims' lawyers who said they would drop all 12 class action lawsuits filed in the United States against Austrian businesses.

The agreement includes provisions that will protect Austrian companies from future lawsuits in the slave labour case and will allow preparations for the handover of payments to begin swiftly.

Compensation for the 150,000 slave labourers -- mostly from central and eastern European states -- will be made from a special reconciliation fund totalling six billion schilling ($415 million).

Half of that sum is to be paid by the Austrian Government, in line with a sharing formula applied in the recent slave labour settlement in Germany. The other half of the fund is to be financed by contributions from private industry and businesses.

However, about 30 percent of the pledged sum has not been paid yet and observers say it is doubtful whether the money will be forthcoming at all.

The Austrian Government has been keen to settle the slave labour compensation case as quickly as possible, not least because Vienna faced strong international criticism over the right-wing populist Freedom Party's inclusion in the coalition government.

Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel wants to show the world that his administration is serious about slave labour compensation, observers say.

In fact, a swift conclusion to the negotiations was of such essence for the government that the authorities "forgot" to contact the Red Cross office in charge of tracking down slave labourers.

The authorities even blocked the work of the Red Cross department for several months -- a fact not known by the public until the situation was revealed by an Austrian newspaper.

The consequence of the delay was that several people who had already successfully been tracked and interviewed by the Red Cross did not get their rightful papers qualifying them as victims of Nazi slave labour policies.

Despite all those problems, all parties represented in the Austrian parliament approved the so-called reconciliation law in July.

The highest compensation payments, totalling 105,000 schilling ($6,394), will go to slave labourers forced to work in concentration camps. Compensation for this category, however, will be paid by Germany.

Victims forced to work in Austrian factories, businesses and the public sector will get 35,000 schilling ($2,131). Slave labourers working in agriculture and the service sector are to be compensated with 20,000 schilling ($1,218).

An additional sum of 5,000 schilling ($304) will be paid to those women who gave birth or were forced to have an abortion during Nazi rule.

Immediately after Tuesday's signing ceremony, Austria will start negotiations on the equally delicate issue of restitution payments for property and wealth seized by the Nazi authorities, mostly from Jews, during World War Two.

Jewish organisations and lawyers for the victims are calling for the setting up of a special restitution fund. But while Austria has already pledged $150 million for this, the country's Jewish community and several of the victims lawyers say that this should only be seen as an "advance payment."

Special restitution envoy Ernst Sucharipa says he is expecting negotiations to be tough and to last at least three years. A key question will again be how much Austrian businesses are willing to contribute towards the fund.

Sucharipa is confident that industry leaders will be cooperating but Austrian Government representative Maria Schaumayer disagrees, saying she foresees years of tough negotiations.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Germany signs agreement to compensate Nazi slave laborers
July 17, 2000

World Jewish Congress
Austrian government

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