First payments sent to Holocaust slave laborers

By Sheila Steffen
CNN New York Bureau

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Some Holocaust survivors who performed slave labor under the Nazis during World War II received the first payments Tuesday from the $4.6 billion German Compensation Fund.

The first round of payments went to some 10,000 Jewish recipients in 25 countries. They are the first group of an expected 160,000 Jewish survivors of slave and forced labor who are eligible for compensation. In the United States, approximately 5,400 survivors will receive $23 million.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany announced the release of funds from Germany at a news conference Tuesday in New York. The 10,000 recipients, all survivors of slave labor, each received $4,400 wired to their bank accounts.

"There is no justice," said Greg Schneider of the Claims Conference, referring to the suffering of Holocaust survivors. "We can only talk about a measure of justice."

Survivors echoed that sentiment.

"No money can pay for all the suffering," said survivor Mendel Rosenfeld. "Each day was a fight for the next." This is no compensation, he said. "This is very far from justice."

In 1944, when Rosenfeld was 16, he worked in a concentration camp near Vienna building tunnels for the Nazis from 4 a.m. until midnight. He said Tuesday he will not touch the money but will give it to charity.

Another survivor, Jamie Rothman, said the compensation is "too little, too late."

The Claims Conference acknowledged the agreement was too long in coming.

"Sixty years in pain and agony, four years in negotiations, two years in political wrangling, one year in legal battles and one month in administrative detail to get to this point is too long," Schneider said.

More important than the money, survivors say, are the moral issues and the moral justice the agreement addressed. Those points seemed to satisfy most of the survivors.

"Both the government and business have accepted the shared responsibility and moral duty rising from the injustice of the past, but we know that the suffering upon millions cannot be undone," said Dieter Kastrup, German ambassador to the United Nations and chairman of the German foundation, Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future.

Kastrup read a statement from German President Johannes Rau saying what the survivors "want is for their suffering to be recognized and called injustice, and in the name of the German people, I beg forgiveness."

Kastrup announced that 700 million German marks had been set aside for future funds earmarked for projects of remembrance, because there can never be moral closure, he said.

Not everyone at the press conference expressed happiness at the timing and extent of the payments. A vice president of the Jewish Claims Conference and a survivor, Roman Kent, criticized the German ambassador whose foundation approved $52 million to go to 51 lawyers who worked on the agreement.

"What right do they have to take millions of dollars out of the foundation. These lawyers should join right now a club that is so popular in American television, 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire.'"

The German Compensation Fund, composed of money from the government and German industries, will provide token compensation to the estimated 1 million men and women forced to work for the Nazis during World War II. Heirs will also be eligible to receive payments ranging from $2,000 to $7,000.

The fund is separate from the forthcoming payments from the Swiss bank "Nazi Gold" settlement, which set aside $800 million for proven former depositors or their heirs as well as some money for refugees and wartime slave laborers exploited by Swiss companies.

Besides the Jewish Claims Conference, the International Organization for Migration, based in Geneva, Switzerland, is handling the payments to non-Jews. Five Eastern European foundations are handling payments in Czechoslovakia, Poland and countries of the former Soviet Union.

To find out about eligibility, applicants should contact the Claims Conference at 800 697-6064 or its Web site (www.claimscon.org). The conference is handling payments to as many as 160,000 Jewish slave laborers now living in the United States and Israel. Approximately, 2,000 applications come in each month, according to the conference.

Obstacles to the distribution of the $4.6 billion Nazi slave labor fund were removed last Thursday when a U.S. Court of Appeals overturned conditions set by a U.S. district court judge that would have dictated how money from the fund could be disbursed to compensate Nazi slave laborers.

Those involved in the case said the decision removed the last legal barrier in the United States to releasing the funds set up by the conference.