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Germany Clears Payments to Nazi Slave Laborers
The German parliament voted Wednesday to free payments from a $4.6 billion fund for surviving Nazi-era slave laborers, finally providing a measure of justice to the victims.
After two years of negotiations, parliament unlocked the government-industry fund by passing a motion that says the dismissal of a series of U.S. lawsuits seeking compensation from German companies constitutes "legal peace."
More than 1 million aging survivors of Nazi labor, most of them in Eastern Europe, are expected to benefit from the closure what Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called "the last great open chapter of our historical responsibility." Some 300,000 applications already have been approved.
Fund officials say payments from the fund should start reaching survivors in mid-June. Former slave laborers will receive one-time payments of up to $6,700.
Germany has paid some $60 billion in restitution for suffering at the hands of the Nazis, but slave labor had always fallen between the cracks. German companies long denied responsibility for using slave labor, arguing they had been pressured by the Nazis.
Schroeder pledged shortly after his 1998 election ¡ª the year before the government returned to the revived German capital of Berlin ¡ª to compensate the victims.
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