Germany weighing funds for Nazi workers 06/02/2007 00:00

Berlin (dpa) - Germany is studying ways to compensate tens of thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors who held jobs in wartime ghettos set up by the Nazis.

A government spokeswoman confirmed that expert-level talks on the issue are being held in New York with the Jewish Claims Conference, which looks after the interests of Jews persecuted under Hitler.

Unlike slave or forced labourers, Jews working in Nazi ghettos were paid a nominal wage or received food for their efforts.

People forced to work as slaves in Nazi Germany have been receiving compensation from a 5.1 billion euros (6.6 billion dollars) fund set up with contributions from the government and industry in 2000.

The German parliament passed a law in 2002 providing for pensions to be paid to ghetto workers, but 61,000 of 70,000 applications were rejected by the pensions board.

The government took the view that the 2002 law had failed to achieve its objectives and was now looking for a less bureaucratic way to make payments possible, the news magazine Der Spiegel said.

Germany's finance ministry estimates the costs of the payments at around 10 billion euros, but the Jewish Claims Conference puts the figure at between 80 to 100 million euros, Der Spiegel said.

DPA

Subject: German news