Germany's Difficult Economic Inheritance

Firms weren't coerced

Most historians now say that it the Nazi regime didn't make companies employ forced laborers. Many of them acted on their own accord. Firms such as Blohm und Voss, Schering, Deutsche Reichsbahn, Thyssen and Mannesmann made laborers work under horrible conditions, said historian Ulrich Herbert. "The road to the crematorium led through Siemens," recalled a survivor of the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Yehuda Bauer, director of the International Center for Holocaust Studies in Israel explained why it took so long for the silence to be broken that surrounded companies' wartime activities.

Peter Gingold, vice chairman of the Auschwitz committee in Germany, during a 2003 press conference announcing IG Farben's bankruptcy

"Public pressure started when the first archives had been opened. People could not pretend anymore that nothing wrong had happened. When talking about forced laborers in Germany, companies used to say: 'They were paid.' That's total nonsense. These people were tortured 12, 14, 16 hours a day and they didn't even get a piece of bread for their work. The SS received payments for the work of the slave laborers, which flowed into private pockets."

After the agreements between Swiss banks and US Jewish organizations in the mid-1990s, those who refused to compensate started falling like dominos. Allianz, Degussa, Deutsche and Dresdner Bank began to settle claims from former forced laborers. Volkswagen and Siemens decided to create a fund to grant survivors individual support.

Like winning the lottery?

In 1998, the newly elected German government coalition of Social Democrats and Greens acted quickly to compensate all forced laborers. A special group was commissioned to hammer out details with the companies involved, and in 1999, the government, representatives of the German business community, the United States and survivors groups from central and eastern Europe came to an agreement.

Former Auschwitz prisoners march with a banner through the remains of the camp

The next year, the foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future" was set up and endowed with €5 billion. Half of the money was provided by the German government and German companies paid the rest. More than 6,500 companies have joined the initiative and, although the victims don't have a legal claim to receive compensation and the payments are voluntarily, over 1.5 million forced laborers from about 80 countries have been compensated so far. By summer 2005, almost 2 million people will have received their money.

"Of course, the money is important," commented Michael Jansen, the foundation's former chairman. "Many of the old people from eastern countries like Belarus, the Ukraine or Russia live in poor conditions. For many of those people, the money is like a lottery jackpot. They are thankful because we improve the difficult conditions they are living in."