The Conference on Nazi gold has opened in London with Britain and America unveiling plans to set up an international fund to compensate Holocaust survivors.

The US is pledging $4m to the fund and has plans to give a further $25 million over a three-year period, if Congress approves. Britain has offered $1.5m (£1m), and both countries hope that other nations will follow suit.

They are also proposing that the fund be used to channel $55m of Nazi gold - still held by the World War Two allies - to help needy victims of wartime persecution by Hitler.

Robin Cook

Opening the conference, the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said: "If the other 42 nations who are going to be attending today's conference join us in making contributions to this account, and in particular if those countries who have a claim on the remaining gold agree that some or all of it should be put into that fund, we can produce a fund which will make a meaningful contribution towards assisting and compensating those who survived the Nazi persecution."

"It would be a second tragedy if those survivors, having lost all their property at the time of the persecution, were now to live out their remaining lives in need."

Stuart Eizenstat

The leader of the US delegation, Under Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, announced that America would immediately deposit $4m in the fund as a "down payment" on its contribution.

He said: "The most important test for any country is not what it did or failed to do 50 years ago, it is rather what it is doing now and will do in the future to face the past honestly. This is the test of our generation. We are not responsible personally for what may have happened in the past. We are responsible, however, for making sure we know the past. We uncover the past, we unveil the past. We learn the lessons of the past and that we act upon those lessons."

The three-day conference is bringing together around 240 delegates from governments, central banks and non-governmental organisations. Its aim is to pool knowledge and discuss what to do with gold reserves known to have been stolen by the Nazis and the question of compensation for the estimated 350,000 survivors of the Holocaust.

 
John Silverman reports for BBC Television's Six o'clock news

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