$2 Million Paid to Compensate Jews for Slave Labor in Flick Factories

The successor to the huge Flick company announced Wednesday that it has paid 5 million German marks (nearly $2 million) in compensation to Jews for its use of slave labor during World War II.

The firm, Feldmuehle Nobel AG, said the payment to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany was for the outstanding claims for forced labor. Feldmuehle is the new name for the remnants of the Flick industrial empire, some of whose subdivisions used forced Jewish labor during the war, investigators have said.

Its late founder, Friedrich Flick, was sentenced to seven years in prison by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in 1947 but served only three years.

Karl Friedrich Flick, son of the founder and owner of Feldmuehle, decided last year to sell the conglomerate to Deutsche Bank for about $2 billion. However, Jewish leaders in Frankfurt demanded that the Flick company pay damages--although there was no outstanding legal judgment against the firm--before the bank followed through on its plans to sell public shares in Feldmuehle.

Controversial Charge

The issue erupted into a controversy involving the Jewish community on Monday when a Bavarian right-wing politician accused Jews of attempting to make a profit out of the Flick transaction.

Hermann Fellner, an official of the Christian Social Union, said the Jewish groups appeared to be money-hungry in pursuing their claims against Flick.

“It creates the impression that Jews are quick to show up when money tinkled in German cash registers,” he said.

Fellner added that it was time that Jews showed more sensitivity toward German feelings, particularly the postwar generation. Fellner is 35.

Drew Fire

The statement was widely attacked by other German political leaders and by West German newspapers.

In an interview with a West German paper Wednesday, Israeli Ambassador Yitzhak Ben-Ari declared that Fellner “regressed into the formulation of the most evil period in German history.”