Ex-Slave Laborers Deserve Far Better

If an American court heard credible testimony that a corporation had exploited slave laborers to the edge of death, the chances are that the jury award to survivors would be in the millions.

Under an agreement recently brokered by the U.S. and German governments, however, survivors of slave labor under the Nazis will be awarded only $790 each for back pay and a lump sum of $7,894 each in recognition of the 55-year delay. Those who were exploited as “forced labor,” such as Nazi prisoners working in agriculture, will get a mere $5,000 each. Why is this agreement being hailed by the Clinton administration as a historic milestone when, in any other context, it would be dismissed as a slap on the wrist of a bully?

One reason is a public perception that the Holocaust is over, that Jewish survivors have received enough reparation, that anything more would be a case of the victims becoming greedy. Some Jewish leaders say that the appearance of greediness might reignite anti-Semitism. “The standard we use is, ‘What will the goyim think?’ ” one said.

This “Holocaust fatigue” syndrome forgets the fact that thousands of slave laborers, many of whom were forced to build roads or make vehicles for the German army, never have been recognized or compensated in the past 55 years. Meanwhile, the firms that enriched themselves through slave labor have become respectable and have shrouded their past in glitzy modern commercials.

Famous German firms like Volkswagen, Siemens, Allianz, Daimler Chrysler and BMW will pay only half the total $5.2-billion settlement, the rest coming from the German government and tax breaks. “We don’t care how many [survivors] there are or how much they get,” one Deutsche Bank official said during the negotiations. “We care only about what we have to pay.” Meanwhile, Ford Motor Co. officials are seeking to raise a few hundred million dollars from the 200 American corporations--including General Motors, Kodak, DuPont and General Electric--that participated in the Reich economy.

This is not so much charity as it is buying protection from class-action lawsuits and terrible publicity. The worst proviso of the new agreement preempts slave labor lawsuits or economic sanctions from states like California, which has a law allowing residents who were slave laborers to sue in state court for compensation. Not only will the companies be spared expensive compensation costs, but they also will be shielded from damaging disclosures in court about their complicity with the Nazis. In addition, European insurance firms that confiscated Jewish assets and Japanese corporations that exploited slave labor during World War II will exploit the agreement to defend themselves from accountability in California.

The California Manufacturers Assn. lobbied in Sacramento last May on behalf of General Motors and Ford against the legislation, subsequently enacted, allowing compensation suits. GM, through its Opel subsidiary, employed thousands of forced laborers in producing half the trucks and many of the aircraft for the German military. Ironically, in 1967, GM was compensated with $33 million from the U.S. government for the American bombing of its Russelsheim plant.

It sounds perfectly reasonable that the national government, rather than states, should control international negotiations. Yet consider the result. While an American citizen can sue a corporation for millions for making a faulty toaster, a Holocaust survivor will not be able to sue a corporation for being the slave of a regime that put humans in ovens.

The repeated argument of U.S. negotiators is that World War II slave laborers are aging and infirm and deserve closure before they all die. That is true, but it is being politically manipulated to force an inadequate settlement. The U.S. did not make survivor compensation a priority until legislators and lawyers representing survivors began taking action (just as it took official California action to cause economic divestment from apartheid South Africa). For 50 years, the Cold War interests of the American government, which defined Germany as a key anti-Soviet ally, took precedence. Even today, the NATO alliance, including Germany’s involvement in the “humanitarian” bombing of Yugoslavia earlier this year, is more strategic to State Department types than achieving full compensation for victims of slavery almost 60 years ago.

Amnesia’s cost is hard to calculate. Yet consider this: BMW exploited Dachau inmates and quadrupled its profits during World War II. Is it not dangerous for democracy when corporations can count on consumers without memory?