$5bn Nazi slave fund approved

2.3m people may have survived Nazi slave camps

By European Affairs correspondent William Horsley

The lower house of the German parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a five billion dollar fund to compensate those who were made to be slave workers for German industry in the Nazi era.

The vote is the result of years of bitter argument, and it clears the way for payments to begin this year for the survivors of brutal ill-treatment more than half a century ago.

The vote provides for a $5bn fund, to be paid for equally by German companies and the government, as compensation to hundreds of thousands of living survivors of Nazi Germany's slave and forced labour system, which lasted up to the end of the World War II.

The Bundestag apologised to the survivors of Nazi slave camps

In a separate resolution, parliament apologised to the victims for what Germans did to them, "namely taking away their rights, maltreatment and exploitation."

Those who voted against the scheme were concerned that the international agreement reached during lengthy talks in the USA may not succeed in preventing future lawsuits against German firms in the American courts.

'Collective responsibility'

The German government's chief representative at the talks, Otto Lambsdorff, said German industry had a collective responsibility for having turned many into slaves for the Nazi war effort.

He said payments to survivors in Poland, Russia, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Belarus, as well as the Jewish Claims conference, might begin this year.

Victims will have one year to apply, and receive up to about $7,000 each.

The reluctance of many German firms to contribute to the fund means that there is still a shortfall of about $1bn.

And many victims of the Nazis slave labour practices are angry that this compensation scheme has taken 55 years to come into being.

Still, it is a landmark in Germany's long effort to come to terms with its past.