X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAuAhUAxpnc7cPYb1OkLJ7zvshIDmZwBHwCFQCXqP13GoolGI0GKTs0SH8HbH12vg== From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Sun, 9 Aug 1998 23:47:53 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: 50 Years On, The Wages of Slave Labour The Times of London                         August 10 1998 OPINION   Michael Pinto-Duschinsky on the Holocaust survivors' split                                                                 50 years on, the wages of slave labour                                                                                                                                         An intense, symbol-laden argument is dividing Britain's community of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. The dispute is over strategies for pursuing financial claims related to their treatment in the Second World War. One side favours public protest and legal threat; the other defends the age-old approach of Jewish organisations: private negotiation and compromise. The immediate issue is the question of compensation from German companies which employed Jewish slave labourers. These include Volkswagen, Daimler-Benz and Siemens. Other claims concern insurance companies and banks (Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank) which financed and benefited from many of Hitler's operations. All these companies have major British interests. It may seem strange that, 53 years after the war, this controversy has resurfaced. The former slaves, who tried to bury memories of the past in order to rebuild their careers and to raise their families, now face old age. This has brought renewed anguish and the realisation that this may be their last chance. Quite apart from the money, the fact that they are not entitled to payment for their slave labour while their former overseers (including SS officers) receive pensions leaves many with feelings of outrage and injustice. The survivors leading the campaign for compensation have received support from younger Jewish professionals such as the lawyer Anthony Julius. This is part of a shift in Anglo-Jewish attitudes. Traditionally, Jews — like other minorities — felt that the price of social acceptance was outward conformity. Yet Britain is now a pluralist nation. While most official Jewish institutions cling to the traditional line of not "making waves", the approach is beginning to lose its logic. The activists among the Holocaust survivors are at loggerheads with the Jewish Claims Conference, a worldwide organisation which includes representatives of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Since the early 1950s, the Claims Conference has negotiated with the German Government and occasionally with German companies. At times it has been successful. But it has almost always negotiated in private, shying away from open confrontation. In recent years it has concentrated on obtaining compensation for Jewish victims of the Nazis living in the former Soviet bloc. Its critics argue that the Claims Conference has become addicted to the inside track; by its aversion to protest it has made some poor deals. When Daimler-Benz and Volkswagen refused to compensate their former Jewish slaves, the Claims Conference agreed instead to accept derisory offers of £3.6 million and £1 million for Jewish institutions such as old people's homes. The specific condition of the companies was that none of the money be paid as compensation to former workers for fear of creating a legal precedent. Controversially, the Claims Conference used bank interest on unspent money from Daimler-Benz to pay for a public relations consultant. The timidity of many Jewish representative bodies has meant that some of the most effective campaigns against the recalcitrant German corporations have come from individuals and groups within Germany itself. It was Baron von Munchhausen, a professor at Bremen University descended from the famous storyteller's brother, who in 1990 initiated a long series of legal actions against the German Government on behalf of Jewish women who survived the cruelties of slave labour. His own mother, a Jewess, had died at Auschwitz. When the Claims Conference rejected his appeal for help, he obtained financial backing from an anonymous German donor to pay the heavy legal bills. After seven years, Munchhausen finally succeeded in obtaining compensation of £7,000 for one woman who had been a slave labourer in Bremen in 1944. This limited victory paved the way for a campaign in Nuremberg which resulted in payments by the Diehl company to 250 Jewish women. Munchhausen then threatened legal action against Volkswagen unless it agreed by July 31, 1998 to compensate its former Jewish workers, which it previously had resolutely refused to do. Within three weeks, VW complied. At the end of July, Deutsche Bank issued a statement acknowledging moral (but, significantly, not legal) repsonsibility for "the darkest chapter in its history". Meanwhile, the German Government has taken modest steps to restrict pension rights of German war criminals. Legal actions against VW and other German corporations are being prepared in the US. The Claims Conference finally decided in July that it, too, will now assist Jewish slave labourers in their negotiations with the German corporations. The settlements so far agreed have been for small sums and for limited groups. The corporations doggedly refuse to accept legal responsibility; the Federal Government does not accept liability to pay for slave labour under the Nazi regime either. This could change if a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens wins power next month. But confrontational tactics are proving more effective than caution. If younger generations of British Jews, together with vociferous groups within Germany, are able to campaign effectively for justice for the survivors of the Nazi regime, there is more hope that a pluralist, democratic Europe may emerge after all. Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Ltd.