First Reparations Are Mailed to the Nazis’ Slave Laborers

After years of litigation, checks were sent out to thousands of Holocaust survivors around the world Tuesday in the first reparations paid to those forced into slave labor by the Nazis.

The New York-based Jewish Claims Conference sent payments of about $4,400 each to about 10,000 Jewish survivors in 25 countries. At the same time, checks were sent to 10,000 non-Jewish survivors in the Czech Republic. Payments to survivors in Poland are expected to be made June 28.

“About this topic, there is no justice,” said Greg Schneider, assistant director of the Claims Conference. “Despite the talk of billions of dollars in settlement funds and raised expectations, no survivors will get rich and no amount of money can ever compensate.”

As many as 1.5 million surviving slave and forced laborers are believed eligible for compensation.

Claims and payments are handled by seven partner organizations: five based in Eastern Europe for victims living there; the Jewish Claims Conference, which handles Jewish claims; and the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, responsible for claims from elsewhere.

The Claims Conference estimates that as many as 160,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors worldwide will eventually be eligible for payments from a $4.37-billion fund authorized by the German government to settle a series of U.S. lawsuits seeking compensation from German companies. The fund is actually 10 billion German marks, and the amount in dollars fluctuates with currency values.

Tens of thousands of non-Jews also have applied.

Slave laborers are those who were forced to work in a concentration camp, ghetto or comparable conditions of confinement. They are eligible for payments of up to $6,600. Forced laborers, those who were made to work in areas under Nazi or Axis occupation, will receive about $2,200 each.