German Firm to Pay Jewish Forced Workers $2 Million

The successor to West Germany’s giant Flick industrial group agreed today to pay $2 million to Jews used as forced laborers during the Nazi regime.

The announcement by Feldmuehle Nobel came after a right-wing politician slurred Jews for seeking the money, bringing about calls for Chancellor Helmut Kohl to intervene in the dispute.

The money will go to Jews forced to work for companies controlled by the giant Flick industrial concern, or their survivors.

Feldmuehle Nobel was part of the Flick conglomerate. After the November announcement that the country’s largest private bank was acquiring Flick, West German Jewish leaders revived the claims for reparations for the Jewish workers.

$3.1 Million Sought

The Jewish leaders had asked the Flick concern for up to $3.1 million in reparations.

Feldmuehle called the $2 million in payments a “humanitarian solution” of the claims. Feldmuehle was the industrial core of the Flick empire, producing textile, steel and other products.

Since the end of World War II, other major German companies--including the giant Krupp steel works and the IG Farben chemical firm--made up to $4 million in similar payments.

Werner Nachmann, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said the Flick payment would relieve the lot of an estimated 1,500 surviving victims of forced labor now living in the United States and Israel.

Not Over Yet

But, in a reference to an anti-Semitic remark by a right-wing politician, he said the controversy provoked by the affair was not over yet.

The politician, Christian Social Union home affairs spokesman Hermann Fellner, said this week that the affair had created “the impression that Jews are quick to show up when money tinkles in German cash registers.”

Israeli’s ambassador to West Germany, Yitzhak Ben Ari, branded Fellner’s remarks a despicable lie today, and the center-right Bonn government distanced itself from them.

“I think it is clear that the comments by Herr Fellner, in their choice of words and direction, were not very fortunate,” government spokesman Friedhelm Ost told a news conference.