Lawsuit Alleges Ford Profited From Forced Labor in WWII
In the first lawsuit of its kind, Ford Motor Co. and its German subsidiary were accused Wednesday of profiting from forced labor during World War II.
The suit, filed as a class action in Newark, N.J., charges that Ford was “unjustly enriched” by the unpaid labor of up to 10,000 civilians at the Cologne, Germany, factory of Ford Werke from 1941 to 1945.
Ford, in a statement, responded that the plant was under Nazi control during the war and that, although “dividends were accumulated from German operations” on the parent company’s behalf, Ford never received them.
Citing a 1945 British Intelligence report, Ford said the Nazi SS governed all use of forced labor in German industry and factory executives “were not allowed any control in the matter.”
The lawsuit, filed by the New York firm of Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, is the first in a series of actions being prepared against U.S. and European companies, partner Melvyn I. Weiss said.
The suit seeks disgorgement of “all economic benefits” that Ford got from forced labor, plus punitive damages for “the inhuman conditions inflicted upon” the plaintiffs. No dollar amount was specified.
Weiss, who is also involved in legal actions seeking war reparations from Swiss banks, declined to name other companies to be targeted.
It was not until a change in German law was enacted last November that individuals were able to pursue legal redress for wartime wrongs.
According to the lawsuit, up to 50% of the Cologne plant’s work force during the war was unpaid and laboring “under utterly barbarous conditions.” Ford Werke switched production from passenger cars to military trucks and track-drive armored personnel carriers.
One of the workers--the only plaintiff named in the suit--was Ukrainian Elsa Iwanowa, who at age 16 was abducted by Nazi troops in her hometown of Rostov and shipped with other youths in cattle trucks to Wuppertal, Germany. There she was “literally purchased” by a Ford Werke representative, according to the suit.
“We were just children. We were frightened and crying for our mothers,” Iwanowa, who now lives in Belgium, said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Co. “At the factory we worked nonstop and were starving all the time.”
Although the Nazis normally confiscated American-owned factories, Ford Werke continued to be owned by Ford throughout the war, the lawsuit states.
Ford got favored treatment, the suit alleges, because of Hitler’s personal friendship with company founder Henry Ford.
The complaint cites the industrialist’s anti-Semitic pamphlet, “The International Jew, a Worldwide Problem,” published in Germany in 1921. It also states that Ford made annual birthday gifts to Hitler of 50,000 reichsmarks (about $30,000) and that on Ford’s 75th birthday in 1938, Hitler awarded him the Great Cross of the German Order of the Eagle.
Unable to find sufficient voluntary labor to support its war effort, the Nazis increasingly turned to forced labor from prisoners of war and 7.5 million people forcibly deported from German-occupied countries, according to the lawsuit.
The use of unpaid forced labor violated international agreements of the Hague Convention and Geneva Convention, the suit states.
It cites a finding by the Nuremberg war tribunal that manhunts for laborers “took place in streets, at motion picture houses, even at churches and at night in private houses.” Under pressure to meet production goals, German companies were encouraged to bid for such laborers, the suit states.
By 1944, it says, Ford Werke was using Russian, Ukrainian, Italian and Belgian civilians, as well as inmates from the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Iwanowa and other Ukrainian deportees were housed in a wooden hut without heat, running water or sewage facilities, the children sleeping in three-tiered wooden bunks without bedding and fed “two inadequate meals a day,” the suit states.
Iwanowa’s job was drilling holes into truck engine blocks. Laborers who failed to meet production quotas “were beaten with rubber truncheons,” the suit states, adding, “attempts to escape were met by execution or transfer to Buchenwald.”
The lawsuit and a BBC documentary that aired recently in England have prompted Ford to begin scouring the corporate archives at its Dearborn, Mich., headquarters “to see if there are additional facts available than those used by earlier historians.”
The company said it has also hired researchers to hunt for records in Germany.
“It must be said that by anyone’s measure this was one of the darkest periods of history mankind has known,” Ford said in its statement.
Historical accounts indicate that conditions at Ford Werke may have been better than at other forced-labor operations, Ford said.
A major bone of contention in the suit will be whether Ford actually benefited from the forced labor.
Although the company said it received none of the dividends earmarked for it by the Nazis, the lawsuit states that the plant expanded greatly during the war and afterward “continued to produce trucks at substantial profit at a time when much of Europe was devastated.”
