U.S. to move on Nazi slave fund

Jewish slave workers in a Nazi ammunition factory

BERLIN, Germany -- A compensation fund for Nazi-era slave labourer victims is ready to distribute payments after German companies delivered the remaining half of the money.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said it now depended on U.S. courts for how quickly a million Holocaust victims would receive the $4.8 billion compensation payment.

Schroeder was speaking after talks with officials for German companies involved in the fund on Wednesday.

"We, the German government and industry alike, are keen to pay up promptly," Schroeder said after the meeting.

"But the preconditions on which the fund was based, and which remain unfulfilled, cannot be fulfilled by us," he said, referring to an accord signed by the United States last year under which it would advise its courts to throw out claims against German firms over their Nazi past.

Manfred Gentz, finance chief of fund member DaimlerChrysler, said so-called "legal closure" would be deemed to be in place when "a number of relevant suits" had been dismissed, without naming them.

"You cannot get 100 percent legal security," he said.

A New York district judge refused last week to dismiss one outstanding case against the German firms, citing as one concern the fact that the companies were still some $668 million short of the sum they pledged to the fund.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Firms urged to pay Nazi slave fund
March 8, 2001
Germany signs agreement to compensate Nazi slave laborers
July 17, 2000
Germans offer $3.3 billion to Nazi slave laborers
October 7, 1999
German court rejects Nazi slave labor compensation
November 5, 1997

German Parliament
German Government
Gerhard Schroeder
Allianz
Volkswagen
DaimlerChrysler

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