12 June 2007
The German fund set up to compensate people forced to work as slave laborers by the Nazis has completed the distribution of monies to victims of the regime. More than US$ 5.8 billion was paid to a total of 1.6 million beneficiaries. The fund, set up in 2001 and endowed with € 5 billion (US$ 6.7 in current values) is made up of contributions from Germany’s federal government and from German industry. The remainder of the fund will be spent on special projects, including humanitarian and medical programs for Nazi victims and education programs for young people. “The money has been paid and everything has run its course without a problem,” Otto Graf Lambsdorff, who negotiated the establishment of the fund on behalf of the German government, told German radio.
Though the fund compensated victims from Kiev to Tel Aviv to Los Angeles, the largest recipient groups were non-Jews in Poland and Ukraine, people exploited in large numbers in Germany's industries during World War II. Unlike Jews, who often were killed immediately in death camps, most non-Jewish forced laborers survived their ordeals. Individual payments from the fund were made depending on the degree of labor and were up to € 7,500 per individual.