Firms urged to pay Nazi slave fund

Eichel says German businesses are acting too slow in the payment of slave funds

BERLIN, Germany -- Finance Minister Hans Eichel urged German firms on Thursday to speed up payments into a fund for surviving Nazi slave labour victims.

Eichel told ZDF television in an interview that the government would actually pay some three-quarters of the total, due to tax breaks for companies, as compensation to the fund.

Berlin agreed last year to set up the 10 billion mark ($4.8 billion) compensation fund -- half of which is to be paid by the government and half by German industry -- which slave labourers charge profited from their toil under the Nazi regime.

Eichel also said in the interview that the government had already made their money available last year and that he could not understand why there were further delays to the payments.

"Now it is really up to business to bring forward their five billion, and quickly, especially given that they are actually only paying two-and-a-half (billion marks) because the tax payers are paying the rest," Eichel said.

Fund officials have said that they are waiting for the industry to come up with more than a billion marks and pledges are only trickling in.

Business representatives have said some companies are waiting for the U.S. courts to drop all pending Holocaust-related lawsuits before they pay up.

This comes after U.S. District Court Judge Shirley Wohl Kram refused to dismiss lawsuits brought by Holocaust victims on Wednesday.

The U.S. judge said one of the reasons she had dismissed the suits brought by slave labour survivors was because the fund was not yet fully paid.

She also found it unfair to block other lawsuits brought against Germany and its companies by Holocaust survivors.

Representatives of Holocaust survivors are under pressure to speed payments to some one million former forced labourers and other Nazi victims because 10 percent of the elderly survivors, mostly east Europeans, are dying each year.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Austria increases Holocaust pay-out
December 22, 2000
Germany signs agreement to compensate Nazi slave laborers
July 17, 2000

US District Court
ZDF

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