Compensation in Practice: The Foundation 'Remembrance, Responsibility and Future' and the Legacy of Forced Labour during the Third Reich 9781785336386

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Compensation in Practice

Compensation in Practice The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and the Legacy of Forced Labour during the Third Reich

Edited by Constantin Goschler in collaboration with José Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2017 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2017 Constantin Goschler The contributions to this book were originally published as part of the volume Die Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts: Die Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ und ihre Partnerorganisationen by Wallstein Verlag in 2012. The research and translation of this book were made possible through the kind support of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ (EVZ). This publication does not represent the views or opinions of the Foundation EVZ; the editor and chapter authors bear sole responsibility for their contributions.

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Goschler, Constantin, editor. | Stiftung “Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft”, sponsoring body. Title: Compensation in practice : the foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and the legacy of forced labour during the Third Reich / edited by Constantin Goschler. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2017. | “The present English-language study, based on a previous, more comprehensive German edition comprising four volumes, was therefore not commissioned by the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”, but written according to the academic methods and criteria of the above-mentioned research group. It is, then, the product of an independent research project made possible by funding from the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”.”--ECIP Foreword. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017015210 (print) | LCCN 2017022660 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785336386 (e-book) | ISBN 9781785336379 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945--Conscript labor--Legal status, laws, etc.--Germany. | Forced labor--Law and legislation--Germany--History. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Reparations. | Reparations for historical injustices. | Stiftung “Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft”. Classification: LCC KK7642 (ebook) | LCC KK7642 .C66 2017 (print) | DDC 940.53/1814--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015210 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78533-637-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-78533-638-6 (ebook)

Contents

 Contents List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Foreword Günter Saathoff Introduction Constantin Goschler Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6

The Long Shadow Cast by Nazi Forced Labour: Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 Henning Borggräfe The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ 1999–2007: The Final Chapter of Compensation for Nazi Injustice? Benno Nietzel The Jewish Claims Conference and Compensation for Nazi Forced Labour 1951–2008 Benno Nietzel

vii viii xi 1

27

54

79

Compensating the Rest of the World: The International Organization for Migration (IOM) Paul Erker

106

The Forced Labourer Payments Programme in Poland: Practices and Perceptions Michael G. Esch

130

Compensation for Forced Labourers in the Czech Republic Stephanie Zloch

156

vi • Contents

Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Index

‘We Cannot Allow the Words of Apology to Sound only on Gravestones’: Forced Labourer Compensation in Ukraine Julia Landau Compensation for Nazi Forced Labour in PostSoviet Russia and Belarus Tanja Penter

182

211 239

 Illustrations Illustration 7.1: ‘Remembrance for the sake of the future’ – memorial in Kiev to the Ukrainian Ostarbeiter, erected in 2005.

182

Illustration 7.2: Some applicants resorted to making their own documents, such as this sketch of the Ostarbeiter camp attached to a briquette factory, which an applicant enclosed with her appeal after receiving a negative response from the International Tracing Service.

199

 Abbreviations AA AGG AbSt ArSt ASSI AWS BEG

Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office) Archiv Grünes Gedächtnis (Archive Green Memory) Archive of the Belarusian Foundation Archive of the Russian Foundation Arbeitsstab Stiftungsinitiative Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność (Solidarity Election Action) Bundesentschädigungsgesetz (Federal Compensation Law) BMF Bundesministerium der Finanzen (Federal Ministry of Finance) BRüG Bundesrückerstattungsgesetz (Federal Restitution Law) CEE Central and Eastern Europe CEEF Central and Eastern European Fund CIS Commonwealth of Independent States ČNFB Česko-Německý Fond Budoucnosti (Czech-German Future Fund) COHSI Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel ČSBS Český svaz bojovníků za svobodu (Czech Association of Fighters for Freedom) DTZF Deutsch-Tschechischer Zukunftsfonds (German-Czech Future Fund) EVZ Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft (Remembrance, Responsibility and Future) EVZStiftG Gesetz zur Errichtung einer Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ (Law on the Creation of a Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’) FPNP Fundacja Polsko-Niemieckie Pojednanie (Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation) GDR German Democratic Republic GFLCP German Forced Labour Compensation Programme JCC Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany ICJ International Court of Justice IMI Italian Military Internees

Abbreviations • ix

IOM ISD KSČ

International Organization for Migration Internationaler Suchdienst (International Tracing Service) Komunistická strana Československa (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) NA Národní Archiv (National Archive) NGO Non-Governmental Organization NIK Najwyższa Izba Kontrolna (Supreme Accounting Chamber) OUN Organizatsija Ukraïnskykh Natsionalistiv (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) PAP Polska Agencja Prasowa (Polish Press Agency) PiS Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) POW Prisoner of War PUON Polska Unia Ofiar Nazizmu (Polish Union of Nazi Victims) PZBWP Polski Związek Byłych Więźniów Politycznych (Association of Former Political Prisoners) RHS-HSP Roma Holocaust Survivors – Humanitarian and Social Programmes SNN Svaz nuceně nasazených (Association of Forced Labourers) SOPVP Sdružení osvobozených politických věžnů a pozůstalých (Association of Liberated Political Prisoners and Their Surviving Dependants) SPP Stowarzyszenie Polaków Kombatantów Poszkodowanych III Rzeszą (Association of Poles who Suffered under the Third Reich) SPB Svaz protifašistických bojovníků (Czech Union of AntiFascist Fighters) UNF Ukranian National Foundation Understanding and Reconciliation USVŽF Ukrajin’ska spilka v’jazniv-žertv nacyzmu (Ukranian Association of Prisoners – Victims of Nazism) USHMM United States Holocaust Memorial Museum UW Unia Wolności (Freedom Union) VVN-BdA Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes–Bund der Antifaschisten (Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime–Union of Antifascists) WJC World Jewish Congress

 Foreword The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ was established in 2000. In the ensuing years, it became known worldwide for its work affording individual payments to over 1.66 million former forced labourers and other victims of the Nazi regime in eighty-nine different countries. It was set up following an international political struggle involving a number of ‘class actions’ by US lawyers and negotiations with several countries. Uniquely, it was conceived to fulfil a combination of purposes: its main task, which was to be completed within a definite period using 93 per cent of the funding, was to issue payments to victims of the Nazi regime, especially former forced labourers. Its second, longer-term mission was to support non-governmental projects to promote civic education and the discussion of history and Nazi injustice as well as to help deal with contemporary challenges against the background of history. The permanent ‘Remembrance and Future Fund’ was set up for this purpose with a fraction of the fund. Another unusual aspect of the foundation’s arrangement was that its endowment fund – some €5.1 billion in total1 – was supplied in equal shares by the German state and a ‘Foundation Initiative’ set up through the German economy. The participating German companies had been targeted by legal action in the United States on account of their previous involvement in Nazi injustices, and contributed their share on condition that they received a guarantee of ‘legal security’ to deflect any future lawsuits, especially in the United States. The German government enacted a law especially to regulate the foundation, and an international supervisory board was set up, bringing together the various political camps that had represented the largely conflicting parties at the preliminary international negotiations mentioned above. It is important to note that the foundation’s establishment marked a much belated form of accounting and compensating for injustice – over fifty-five years after the events to which it responded. In this way, the German state and German economy finally recognized an obligation towards the victims after decades of denying any responsibility for this previous injustice.2 While all payments due under the Foundation Law

xii • Foreword

had been issued by 2007, the foundation’s project sponsorship continues and will remain its mission in the future. The experience gained by the personnel and players around the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ is now garnering the interest of politicians, journalists and civic activists in many parts of the world, such as the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Africa and Latin America. In the latter, especially, a number of countries are struggling with their own histories of injustice of the past millennium, and asking themselves and us whether the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ might serve as a viable model or at least provide practical hints for solving some of their currently pressing problems. The first payments to former Nazi forced labourers and other Nazi victims whose applications were approved were made in 2001. The payment programme could not have been implemented without the help of seven partner organizations performing the central tasks of assessing applications and issuing payments to those approved. They were mostly based in the countries of central and eastern Europe, as most former forced labourers had been deported from here during the Nazi era. In summary, the application and payment procedure amounted to a project providing symbolic compensation for Nazi injustice on a scale that was unprecedented in history or on the institutional landscape. Immediately after the payment programme had been completed in 2007, a group of researchers at Bochum’s Ruhr University around professor of contemporary history Prof. Dr Constantin Goschler submitted a proposal to the foundation to research the programme’s development. The group requested the foundation’s cooperation on discussing its experience of the compensation programme and the provision of access to its files as well as funding to make the project possible. The board of trustees and the foundation’s directorate agreed to the proposal. Again, it seems to have been without precedent for the participants in a recently completed project to place themselves and their files at the disposal of academic research without waiting for any time to lapse. Under the Federal German Archive Law, archival holdings are not usually made available for research until thirty years after an event, and personal documents are not accessible until thirty years after the death of the person in question. The present English-language study, based on a previous, more comprehensive German edition comprising four volumes, was therefore not commissioned by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, but written according to the academic methods and criteria of the above-mentioned research group. It is, then, the product of an independent research project made possible by funding from the

Foreword • xiii

Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. The foundation has had no influence on the book’s content; it reflects the views of the participating authors only. The goal of the research project, as formulated by the foundation’s board of trustees in a ruling of June 2007, was to enable ‘the work of the Foundation Initiative and its partner organizations … [to be] considered in the context of contemporary history’. The researchers were to conduct an independent study into the consequences and repercussions of the foundation’s and its partner organizations’ activities for each of the participating countries. From the point of view of the foundation, it is important to distinguish between the first phase of international negotiations and their outcome and the implementation phase, i.e. when the specifications were put into practice. We need to make this distinction partly because the relative success of a programme of this kind will be judged differently according to whether it is viewed from the perspective of the participating organization or that of academic research. Similarly, a programme of this kind, or any other international action context, can give rise to effects and political implications that are interesting from an academic point of view but not part of the actual mandate of implementing the relevant law. When the international negotiations were opened in 1998, none of the salient points – from the profile of the programme’s beneficiaries to the volume of the endowment fund – were clearly defined. But by 2000, a joint statement had been signed by all the participants in the negotiations and an agreement between the US and German governments concluded. This formed the basis for the Foundation Law (EVZStiftG),3 regulating the work of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and determining its most important aspects, such as its purposes and funding. The negotiating parties faced each other to some extent as opponents: some (such as the representatives of victims’ associations) struggled to increase their funding while others (the German government and German economy) aimed to limit the scope of eligibility as far as possible. The foundation’s final arrangement – the volume of its financial endowment and the definitions of the forms of Nazi injustice to be compensated under the Foundation Law – was the result of a compromise on which all the negotiators agreed. In essence, the international negotiations had the character of collective bargaining as commonly performed between trade unions and employers. The foundation and its partner organizations were charged with putting the thus defined regulations into practice. Which points had been established by the end of the negotiations? One point agreed on was that the payment programme marked a

xiv • Foreword

political solution. Both the class actions at US courts and the policies of the day’s ruling SPD and Green Party had increased the pressure on the Bundestag to resolve the matter by providing financial aid not only to former forced labourers but also to victims of the Nazis’ inhumane medical experiments and those who had suffered as a consequence of the German economy’s involvement in asset and insurance losses. It was hoped that by taking a political approach and establishing a foundation (rather than continuing a process of convoluted legal battles), swift action could be taken to issue payments to as many survivors as possible, most of whom were already over the age of eighty. The initial intention was to compensate those who had suffered most, but not to try and compensate all victims. Other aspects that were determined were the volume of the financial endowment, the cooperation of the partner organizations, the distribution of the funds between them and their responsibilities. Compensation for forced labour was to be made as one-off, lump-sum payments (without taking factors such as the duration of the forced labour performed into consideration), which were to be issued in two instalments, and the partner organizations were to establish complaints departments to process appeals. Dependents of former Nazi victims were only eligible to file claims in exceptional cases. Categories of beneficiaries were devised, each entitled to different levels of benefits, and anchored in the Foundation Law. The highest amount was to go to those who had been made to perform forced labour in concentration camps and ghettos, followed by deportees who had been exploited as forced labour in industry and state institutions. Finally, an option clause was added as a possible means of accounting for additional victim groups, especially forced labourers in agriculture, if the partner organizations had sufficient funds remaining. It had also been ruled that a term as a prisoner of war did not entitle applicants to compensation. In addition, applicants were required to sign a waiver renouncing any future claims so that the German companies gained the ‘legal security’ they sought against future ­ lawsuits. Did the staff of the foundation and its partner organizations have any latitude for influencing the course of the payment programme? The ‘option clause’ was an important device that was extensively used by the partner organizations to include groups of victims of Nazi injustice over and above those determined by the Foundation Law. Similarly, they were able to create subcategories of the statutory categories. The fact that the payments in these cases were often much reduced was a regrettable, but unavoidable corollary of this regulation.

Foreword • xv

Lastly, a statutory process of authentication, enabling applicants without any documentary evidence to substantiate their claims by means of eyewitness statements, letters, photographs, sketches etc., proved an important device for processing the applications. The international board of trustees had the privilege of distributing the interest accrued on the programme’s accounts – totalling an additional almost €400 million – between the partner organizations and so supplementing their individual funds. The researchers responsible for the present study confined their investigations to the payment programme in aid of former Nazi forced labourers. The other statutory entitlement categories fell outside the frame of their research. For this reason, the study does not encompass the entire field of activity of the foundation or its partner organizations, especially since the various authors did not follow a standard approach to researching and composing their chapters. But in this way it focuses on the predominant and most high-profile aspect of the foundation’s activities, i.e. payments to former forced labourers. The researchers viewed documents that had never before been examined in a systematic context. Moreover, by conducting interviews with staff of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, German government agencies and the former partner organizations, they simultaneously created sources that otherwise might never have become available for future reference. In this way, too, they greatly increased our fund of knowledge. The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ placed its information at the researchers’ disposal and asked the partner organizations to do the same. I have already mentioned the divergence between the foundation’s perspective on whether it achieved its goals and the observations of external scholars. In June 2007 the international board of trustees of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ officially announced that the payments had been ‘successfully completed’. An extensive list of all the figures was drawn up by the foundation and the German government, allowing the Bundestag and the public to inspect the accounts.4 The chief German negotiator concerned with the establishment of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, Otto Graf Lambsdorff, had remarked in 2000 that all those involved had greeted the outcome of the negotiations with ‘mild dissatisfaction’. The chief Polish negotiator and later curator of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, Jerzy Kranz, however, later spoke of ‘mild satisfaction’ with the accomplishment of the payment programme. ‘Mild satisfaction’ is of course somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, the foundation and its partner organizations had managed to

xvi • Foreword

realize an international programme within a relatively short period and provide over 1.7 million forced labourers and other Nazi victims – especially in eastern Europe – with concrete, albeit belated financial compensation for previously suffered injustice. By and large, they had also managed to prevent the misuse of the funds (in contrast to some previous payment programmes for Nazi victims). On the other hand, the programme came too late for most Nazi forced labourers, decades after the end of the war. Others missed the deadline for applications or had no documents or other means of authenticating the injustice they had suffered. Entire groups of former forced labourers, such as Italian Military Internees, Soviet prisoners of war and western European forced labourers who had not been imprisoned, were not accounted for by the programme primarily due to the limited amount of funds and the guidelines laid down during the international negotiations. Even for those who received payments, the process of applying for compensation could have the negative effect of reawakening disturbing memories. Others, conversely, seized the opportunity provided by the application process to talk about events that had long been suppressed and document them for future generations. Some took part in interviews to have their life stories made accessible on the internet. Nevertheless, most applicants certainly perceived it as an imposition to have to sign a disclaimer, renouncing all future claims and lawsuits on grounds of their exploitation as forced labour, to complete the application form. And the fact remains that the Foundation Law provided for one-off, lump-sum payments – graded according to the severity of the forced labour performed – which by no means constituted full ­compensation for damage. The foundation opened its own files to research, but it could not ensure that the governments, law firms, companies or victims’ associations that had participated in the negotiations did the same. While much had already been written on the negotiations and genesis of the ­foundation, no independent scholarly literature had yet appeared on the application or payment procedure – merely an overview from the foundation’s perspective.5 One aspect remains neglected even after the present study: no representative surveys or scholarly investigations were conducted into the 1.7 million recipients’ response to the individual payments. The foundation carried out a spot check of some one hundred eligible claimants to ascertain whether they had actually received the money they had been promised. But a spot check of this kind cannot be regarded as truly representative. In 1999, then German President Johannes Rau publicly declared that Nazi forced labour ‘meant being carried off, stripped of a homeland and

Foreword • xvii

rights, and having one’s human dignity brutally violated. It often intentionally served the purpose of working people to death … [I]n the name of the German people, (I) beg forgiveness.’6 Publicly recognizing forced labour as Nazi injustice made it politically possible to afford payments to former forced labourers. For many, this was what actually lent credibility to the payments. Thus the financial gesture – though perceived as disappointing in many individual cases – made amends to some degree, simply by the fact that it recognized the injustice the victims had suffered. As many commentators and representatives of victims’ associations have stressed over the years, one of the programme’s main achievements was certainly its contribution towards reconciliation. For international relations – especially between the Federal Republic of Germany and those countries of eastern and central Europe that were particularly badly affected – it was significant that Germany not only admitted its responsibility for Nazi forced labour but also took concrete steps to realize an international project (with the partner organizations in different countries and an international board of trustees as a supervisory body) as a consequence. The personnel of the institutions involved in the payment programme were in frequent contact with the survivors and their organizations. We can assume that they did not approach their work as a mere ‘job’ or chore that history obliged them to do, but as a ‘labour of love’ in the interest of the survivors and understanding among nations. Indeed, it required a level of involvement that sometimes pushed them to the limits of their capabilities. Most were painfully aware of the limitations and inherent difficulties of the programme as well as of the suffering the applicants had experienced. While previously, compensation for forced labourers under the Nazi regime had been obstructed by the reluctance of German society and politics to confront the issue, in the end, time became the main adversary. How successful was the programme and its payments in academic terms? And: What, if anything, can be learned from this historic project in order to deal with other cases of historical injustice and devise future compensation regulations for mass-scale injustice? These are important questions that remain to be explored. I am grateful to the authors of the present study for laying some extraordinarily important foundations for future scholarly and political debate. Berlin, May 2017 Günter Saathoff is Co-Director of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’.

xviii • Foreword

Notes 1. Throughout the book, a billion is used in the sense of an American billion (a thousand million). 2. Prior to this, West Germany had developed a framework of compensation laws and regulations over the decades, none of which responded to the cases governed by the Foundation Law (EVZStiftG). They were not applicable to all groups of victims of the Nazi regime, and especially not to claimants in central and eastern Europe before 1989, when Europe’s East–West divide began to crumble. 3. See Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff (eds), ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 174–76, 185–87 and 199–201. 4. ‘Sechster und abschließender Bericht der Bundesregierung über den Abschluss der Auszahlungen und die Zusammenarbeit der Stiftung “Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft” mit den Partnerorganisationen’, Bundestagsdrucksache 16/9963, Berlin 2008, http://dipbt.bundestag.de/doc/ btd/16/099/1609963.pdf. 5. Jansen and Saathoff, Mutual Responsibility, 87–150 and 209–24. 6. Ibid., 173.

 Introduction Constantin Goschler

In June 2007 the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ announced the completion of its payment programme to former Nazi forced labourers, begun at the turn of the millennium. In cooperation with seven partner organizations, the foundation had distributed a total of DM 8.7 billion among 1.66 million forced labourers in eighty-nine countries of the world, mostly in eastern and east central Europe. While the turbulent international negotiations preceding the programme had received in-depth media coverage, the programme’s completion was noted only in the margins. Yet as the authors of the present book have found, it was the actual practice and effects of implementing the programme, with its mission to compensate for historical injustice, which made the deepest impact.

From Politics to Practice of Compensation What does this study concern? In 1998 the first ever coalition government made up of Social Democrats and Greens came to power in Germany. One of its primary goals on entering government was to find solutions to the enduring conflict over compensation for forced labour and other unresolved issues of compensation for Nazi persecution. The ground had been prepared by a unique combination of German civil activism and US civil law: gaining compensation for ‘forgotten victims’ of Nazism was one of the moral and political goals that the Social Democrats and the Greens shared, leading them to form a Red-Green political camp in the 1980s. In addition, a series of class actions had

2 • Constantin Goschler

been placing export-oriented German businesses under considerable pressure since the mid 1990s. Publicly accused of having profited from forced labour as well as the expropriation of Jewish property in the Third Reich, a number of German companies faced the threat of damaged reputations and considerable financial losses. Following years of legal struggles over compensation for Nazi injustice, the new German government finally brought the issue back into the political arena. It formed an alliance with a Foundation Initiative made up of German companies, and negotiations were opened. Participants included the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (JCC) and a number of US lawyers, as well as government representatives from eastern and east central Europe, the United States and Israel. Stuart Eizenstat presided over the negotiations as Special Representative of the US President. After much hard bargaining, the various parties agreed on a total endowment of DM 10 billion (€5.1 billion) that was to be provided jointly by the German economy and the German government. Essentially, this was the price of gaining the US government’s backing to put an end to the class actions against German companies and safeguard against future actions. The impression conveyed to the public of the negotiations, during which the fund was shared out according to the individual parties’ requirements, was of a fierce battle between victims’ groups for each one’s share of the money. The ‘Future Fund’, set up with half the endowment at the request of German industry to support humanitarian and future-oriented activities after completion of the compensation programme, was reduced to DM 700 million (€358 million). Further portions were set aside for asset losses, ‘other personal injuries’, special humanitarian programmes, claimant lawyers and administrative costs. But the bulk of the fund – eventually totalling some DM 8.7 billion (€4.4 billion) including interest – was earmarked for payments to forced labourers. The German side measured each party’s requirements by two crucial yardsticks: firstly, all aspects of Nazi persecution that might be a cause of action were to be covered. Secondly, each party’s estimated number of forced labourers was multiplied by the political influence of their respective lobbyists. The principal target groups were forced labourers from former Eastern bloc countries, who had previously received virtually no compensation from Germany, and Jewish ‘slave ­labourers’ – a definition advanced by the JCC to highlight the exceptional fate they had suffered. This semantic distinction was also reflected in the different payment rates: slave labourers were to receive the highest rate of DM 15,000 (€7,670), while forced labourers were entitled to DM

Introduction • 3

5,000 (€2,556). Other groups could be included in the programme, and receive smaller payments, by means of so-called option clauses. Western European forced labourers and prisoners of war, however, were not eligible for payments if they had no proof of being confined in concentration camps or other places of imprisonment recognized by the foundation. By making such exclusions, Germany hoped to reduce the number of potential claims and thus ensure that the individual payments did not shrink disproportionately. The agreed sum of DM 10 billion marked a compromise between the maximum burden the German side was prepared to shoulder and the minimum amount the claimant parties were prepared to accept. It was clear from the outset that it would not be enough to compensate all those who had suffered damages. The payment programme in aid of forced labourers faced the conundrum of achieving a result that was acceptable to all sides with a fund that was too small from the start. A law enacted in July 2000 by the German Bundestag regulating the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and implementing the outcome of the negotiations (Foundation Law) was built around the mutual condition of a limited fund for payments to forced labourers and legal security for German economy.1 The Foundation Law was, then, based on an asymmetrical package deal: claimants were required to sign a legally binding waiver renouncing all future claims to compensation while the payments they received were made explicitly not in recognition of any legal obligation. A comparison with the results of collective bargaining between trade unions and employers, as is part of the foundation’s own narrative,2 might be misleading. At least in free societies, the idea that such an agreement should come at the price of a formal renouncement of any future negotiations might not be conceivable. A complex transnational network of institutions was formed to implement the Foundation Law. The Berlin-based Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ was at the centre and took a supervisory role. It in turn was answerable to the Federal Ministry of Finance and a board of trustees on which members of the partner organizations – themselves subject to the foundation’s supervision – played a key role. Where possible, institutions that already worked in the field of compensation were engaged as partner organizations. These included the reconciliation foundations set up in the 1990s in the Soviet successor states and Poland to distribute DM 1.5 billion (€767 million) provided following German reunification to benefit former Nazi victims, and the German-Czech Future Fund, set up in 1997, in the Czech Republic. The JCC had several decades’ experience of dealing with compensation for

4 • Constantin Goschler

Jewish Nazi persecutes, but in contrast to the above-mentioned institutions was a transnational organization. Finding a suitable organization to represent the forced labourers from the ‘rest of the world’ was more difficult. Eventually, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva was chosen, though entirely new to this field. The institutional conglomerate thus created brought together several different historical, legal and cultural viewpoints as well as political and social backgrounds, with an uncertain outcome. The former forced labourers encountered this both as individuals and in organized groups: as applicants, lobbyists and critics of the payment programme. The asymmetrical package deal anchored in the Foundation Law also governed the triangular relationship between the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, the partner organizations and the applicants. Ultimately, the payment programme created a complex moral economy, which in contrast to Edward P. Thompson’s well-established use of the term did not refer to the morals of the market, but rather to the market of morals, which is determined by competition and where suffering is converted into benefits.3 The ‘compensation in exchange for legal security’ deal provided for by the Foundation Law triggered a complex administrative process that addressed such pivotal matters as the rehabilitation and recognition of victims and the need for reconciliation and understanding. The programme contained an inherent tension, balancing as it did sober legal and economic considerations with moral pathos, which should not be regarded in simplistic or cynical terms as merely the workings of politics with rhetorical accompaniment. The history of the negotiations has been described in depth by eyewitnesses, journalists, lawyers and some historians.4 But as so often in the history of compensation, the really interesting part of the process, i.e. the actual practice and its consequences, was largely ignored. Perhaps the process by which the outcome of negotiations is turned into a transnational bureaucratic payment practice does not seem immediately fascinating. But it is in fact enlightening: the payment practice was no law enforcement machine but a complex process of continuous negotiation, not only between the triangle made up of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, the partner organizations and the applicants but also between the various national and transnational publics involved – both on a personal level and on a discursive level. While the preceding diplomatic negotiations had essentially been propelled by the power logic of international relations, over the course of the payment process, the individual persecutees came to the fore with their diverse and hitherto largely unknown biographies, which so

Introduction • 5

often challenged the previously determined categories and criteria for distributing the funds. Importantly, the process marked the translation of material benefits into symbolic acts of recognizing past histories of persecution. Can any general conclusions for dealing with the victims of collective violence after the removal of the perpetrator regime be drawn from the studies contained in the present book? This is where the opinions of practitioners and historians tend to diverge. In overstated terms, the former are interested in successful actions and what facilitates them, while the latter focus on the difficulties and problems that arise.5 The chapters contained here seek to portray the programme’s prospects of success in historical contexts, exploring questions such as: What expectations did the various parties have of the payment process? How did the various parties perceive each other? What results did the payment process achieve for each of them – as individuals and as groups? How did they assess their experience of the process in the end? It was not the authors’ aim, then, to adjudicate on the payment programme from the historian’s safe vantage point or announce the names of winners and losers.

The Semantic Fields of ‘Forced Labour’ and ‘Compensation’ The project occupied a difficult semantic field. The central concepts, contained in the very title of the book, are problematic as they blend elements of the source language with analytical factors. To start with, the term ‘forced labour’:6 the international military tribunal in Nuremberg identified and condemned the Nazi ‘slave labour programme’ as a central aspect of the crimes committed during the Third Reich. The term ‘slave labour’ thus primarily denoted all those who had been forcibly taken to the German Reich during the Second World War as ‘foreign workers’ (Fremdarbeiter), as they were generally referred to before and for some time after 1945 in Germany. When the debate on the ‘forgotten victims’ of compensation arose in West Germany in the 1980s, the term ‘forced labourer’ (Zwangsarbeiter) came into wider use. During the negotiations over the Foundation Law in the late 1990s, the JCC insisted on distinguishing between slave labour and forced labour. In this way, the fate of those who had performed work intended to induce death was to be distinguished from those who had by and large performed work for a rational, economic purpose that was not expressly intended as a means of physical destruction. The use of the term ‘slave labour’ had, then, narrowed since the Nuremberg trials from the general to

6 • Constantin Goschler

the specific: the category ‘slave labour’ encompassed mostly but not exclusively Jews, whereas the category ‘forced labour’ referred in the main to the much larger group of non-Jewish former ‘foreign workers’. In view of this, the present book generally refers to ‘forced labourers’ with respect to potential or actual applicants, while also distinguishing between ‘forced labourers’ and ‘slave labourers’ when addressing the distinction made during the payment programme. Similarly, the financial transaction at the core of the payment process defies precise definition. In the language of the Foundation Law, the programme was concerned with providing ‘humanitarian benefits’ (humanitäre Leistungen), ‘payments’ (Zahlungen) or ‘deficiency payments’ (Ausgleichszahlungen). By consciously avoiding references to compensation in the sense of reimbursement (Entschädigung), the legislators hoped to circumvent the programme’s central dilemma: while functioning as a legal device to deflect compensation claims in the United States, it was not intended to acknowledge any legal claims. The language used in the discourse was, then, always a reflection of the material, symbolic and not least legal expectations implicitly attached to the programme. But in contrast to the efforts of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, to emphasize the novelty of this kind of benefit, the researchers’ primary aim was to view the programme in the context of the ongoing debate on compensation for forced labourers. Hence the authors of the present book, which explicitly seeks to explore the moral economy of the ‘humanitarian gesture’ thus made, use the term ‘compensation’ while factoring in the political dimensions of the terms in the various contexts explored.

Expectations, Interactions and Success: Levels of Investigation and Hypotheses Each of the eight chapters contained in the present book investigates the triangular relationship between the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, its partner organizations and the applicants in a different social and political context and from a different perspective. The first countries to cooperate with Germany on the programme were the successor states of the Soviet Union – especially Russia, Belarus and Ukraine – and former Eastern bloc countries Poland and the Czech Republic. In all these countries, the payment programme in aid of former forced labourers took place in the context of post-Soviet transformation, though there were differences in practice. The JCC and the IOM, in contrast, were both founded in 1951 and signalled the

Introduction • 7

emergence of new actors in international politics. These transnational organizations did not operate within nationally defined social contexts; the forced labourers they represented came from a number of different countries. The JCC was responsible for Jews and the IOM for Roma, among others. Their clienteles were, then, categorized by ethnicity but not, or only to a lesser extent, by nationality. This typological distinction between national and transnational partner organizations runs through the entire study: firstly, with respect to levels of expectation, secondly to interaction and communication between the various parties and, thirdly, to the results and effects of the payment programme and the various actors’ responses to them. (1) Expectations: the wide range of institutional and private actors involved from very different contexts attached a range of expectations to the programme. This gave rise to a number of different conflict situations. The participating institutions increasingly perceived themselves as champions of the interests of forced labourers. They all cited principles of justice to legitimize their divergent positions, basing their arguments on different concepts of justice, each of which was justified by its own inherent rationale. In typological terms, it is possible to distinguish between three main concepts of justice that were brought to bear on the payment programme in various constellations: restorative justice, redistributive justice and procedural justice. Restorative (i.e. historical) justice was seen to relate to the extent of suffering endured; this replaced tangible loss as a benchmark, shifting the focus from the material to the psychological and personal. Redistributive (i.e. social) justice, in contrast, was sought in the light of the former forced labourers’ contemporary situations and needs. Procedural justice, a key aspect of liberal social ethics, is not concerned with just outcomes, but, as Friedrich August von Hayek has described, with the just application of rules.7 The character of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ was shaped by political requirements designed to ensure legal security against future compensation claims. It was, then, built around the attempt to safeguard procedural justice for the benefit of the German economy, i.e. the model of a fair deal – from the German point of view – comprising financial payments in exchange for security against lawsuits from the United States. So in parallel with recognizing the claims by former forced labourers in the context of the payment programme, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ insisted on written disclaimers from the applicants to ensure that they renounced all future legal claims in exchange for their compensation payments.

8 • Constantin Goschler

The act of submitting the disclaimer along with the completed application form thus marked the crux of the asymmetrical deal defining the programme. It also deterred an unknown number of potential applicants from participating – this, too, is an aspect of its history. As the programme progressed and the actors involved gained more experience of it, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ grew increasingly concerned with guaranteeing the fair and uniform application of the programme’s rules, not only for the sake of the applicants but also to consolidate its relations with its partner organizations. The partner organizations thus found themselves ‘fighting’ on two fronts. Vis-à-vis the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ they and various supporters fought to achieve either restorative or redistributive justice, acting as the true champions of the forced labourers’ cause. Deciding how to distribute their respective ceiling funds often placed them in a dilemma. For example, they faced the choice between limiting the number of approvals for the sake of raising the amount of each individual payment or, conversely, issuing smaller sums to a larger number of applicants. In their regular, personal encounters with the applicants, however, the partner organizations often pointed out their duty to ensure procedural justice, in keeping with their role as institutions. But the rules that they sought to uphold had been largely made independently of them. The former forced labourers, who had suffered deportation, confinement and racial persecution, were predominantly concerned with redistributive justice. Yet they also raised the issue of material losses, which had been largely abandoned by political discourse on compensation, and claimed the wages and social benefits they had been denied. The main obstacle to this kind of compensation was the lump-sum arrangement written into the Foundation Law. While distinguishing between slave labour and forced labour, the law did not make any provisions for adjusting payments according to the duration of forced labour, despite the fact that assessing individual fates is considered to be crucial to achieving restorative justice. The lump-sum arrangement can be interpreted as a reaction to the rise of trauma discourse since the 1970s.8 The individualized approach to legal action requiring the extensive hearing of evidence, which had become standard in German compensation jurisdiction, was increasingly felt to be a source of renewed trauma for Nazi persecutees. Secondly, the lump-sum payments were symptomatic of a shift in focus from quantifiable damages towards non-quantifiable suffering that had attended the rise of victim discourse. And lastly, the lump-sum arrangement was chosen in order to simplify the procedure’s administration and to enable payments to be

Introduction • 9

issued as swiftly as possible. Many applicants criticized the lump-sum arrangement as it did not make allowances for different levels of suffering. Many forced labourers, especially in eastern Europe, wanted to see their fates recognized on a hierarchical scale. Fierce rivalries broke out between victim groups as they struggled to seize the opportunity to improve their social standing as well as their material circumstances. Ultimately, former forced labourers hoped to have their own histories of suffering regarded on equal terms as that of the Jews, continuing a conflict that had sparked during the preliminary negotiations. The clash of different forms of justice was only the most obvious conflict arising from the various parties’ divergent hopes for the outcome of the programme. Former forced labourers hoped that compensation payments would bring symbolic recognition of their suffering. To some extent, the partner organizations also sought recognition, primarily of the exceptional losses that each nation perceived itself to have suffered during the Second World War. This was the case in Poland, the Czech Republic and Ukraine.9 Hence the payment programme was harnessed to these countries’ efforts to design a new post-communist self-image. On the German side, it was hoped that the compensation process would contribute to international reconciliation. (2) Interaction and communication: while the first level of investigation is primarily concerned with discourse, the second analyses compensation as a social practice. Here, the focus is placed on the interaction and communication between the various actors on all sides of a programme that was bureaucratically organized and realized within the frame of a complex ‘network of compensation’.10 What relations developed between them and which positions did they hold as a result of their interaction and communication? What influence did they have on the course and outcome of the payment programme? And how did they deal with the intense media coverage of the process? First of all, the payment programme formed a normative sphere under the Foundation Law, which defined a binding legal framework for everyone involved in the bureaucratic process and initially also structured their relations with the forced labourers – now in the role of applicants. However, a number of bilateral negotiations and agreements between the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and the partner organizations changed the legal rules of the game. Many were made in a bid to reconcile the individual countries’ national legal systems with the German Foundation Law. The points negotiated included inheritance provisions for dependents of forced labourers who passed away while their claims were still being

10 • Constantin Goschler

processed. Another influential factor was the staff’s direct encounter with the applicants and their histories, not least because it brought the many difficulties, hardships, shortcomings and dilemmas inherent in the application process palpably to light.11 Thus the normative sphere created by the Foundation Law was a fundamental but not determining aspect of the social practice of the payment process. Each of the respective social, cultural and architectonic spheres within which the process took place also played a significant role, not to mention the virtual sphere, since the internet was as vital for conducting outreach as it was for processing the claims.12 Communication between the staff in the institutions administering the programme and the applicants was influenced and informed by their family backgrounds, levels of education and behavioural patterns as well as by bureaucratic traditions, institutional and spatial parameters and not least the means of communication used. The persistence of administrative traditions, tending to outlive even the collapse of political systems, is a well-known phenomenon. Here, the relationship between applicants and authorities was grounded on long-standing traditions via, for example, the forms of address used on the application forms.13 Because of the broad range of participating institutions in various parts of the world, the programme was carried out in the context of disparate bureaucratic cultures, despite being regulated in principle by the – German – Foundation Law. The differences cannot be overstated: the spectrum ranged from post-Soviet bureaucracies in eastern Europe and administrations explicitly striving to adjust to the standards of Western NGOs in east central Europe to the New York-, Frankfurt- and Jerusalem-based JCC with its own range of national bureaucratic contexts, and the electronically operating IOM in Geneva, serving a clientele that tended to live without electricity. Wavering between German bureaucratic efficiency and NGO culture, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ was not able to enforce a uniform approach but made many attempts to assert German standards of ‘orderly administration’ in all the participating countries. To some extent, the foundation’s approach echoed the liberal mission to promote civil society, a successor of the old colonial mission to promote civilization.14 The significance of each partner organization’s cultural context is, then, far from marginal, as the chapters here show in detail. Gauging the relationship between the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and its partner organizations is complicated by the fact that it was only partially regulated by the Foundation Law. A number of other factors also played an influential role. In the 1990s, large sums had disappeared into unknown channels from programmes

Introduction • 11

affording lump-sum payments to former Nazi victims in the Soviet Union’s successor states. Due to this negative previous experience, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ was particularly eager to maintain a controlling influence, both in the interest of the former forced labourers – to ensure that they received the entire sum earmarked for them – as well as in the interest of gaining legal security for the German economy – the condition seen to ensure justice. A peculiar role reversal took place as a result, with the national partner organizations that saw themselves as defenders of the former forced labourers against the Germans facing a German institution that now vied with them for this role. An inversion of history politics thus persisted that had first become apparent during the negotiations over the Foundation Law, when, in view of the growing rivalry between victim groups, the German state had taken the role of mediator between persecutee interests and the German economy.15 The law regulating the relationship between the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and its partner organizations provided for the former to act as supervisor of the procedure, thus performing a control function. In practice, it did so by regularly dispatching German supervisory teams to conduct on-site inspections of the partner organizations’ work. These transpired to be formative experiences for both sides. Austria was also carrying out a forced labour compensation programme in the former Eastern bloc countries at the time,16 and they inevitably compared their experiences of the two donor countries’ conduct. The outcome often echoed the stereotypical view of pedantic Prussian bureaucracy versus Austrian cordiality.17 The authors of the present book, however, found that the relationship between the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and its partner organizations vacillated between a clearly hierarchical relationship and a cooperative one, based on negotiation, in which mutual trust developed over the course of the payment process. Overall, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ fluctuated between presenting itself as the custodian or the master of the procedure. Adding the former forced labourers to the equation, the picture becomes even more complex. The spectrum ranged from applicants who had already established a routine for dealing with compensation procedures – and hence did not necessarily distinguish between them – right up to applicants who had never before been able to speak or write about their past suffering in public or even in private. The first type was found mostly among Jewish Holocaust survivors living in the West; the latter primarily among eastern European forced labourers, who after the war had been discriminated against as Nazi collaborators

12 • Constantin Goschler

in their home countries. Some applicants were versed in dealing with benefit administration and compensation bureaucracy and presented their claims confidently; others perceived the experience of dealing with bureaucracy as a form of continued discrimination, such as the Roma. And lastly, there were applicants whose claims were processed by national partner organizations, which they viewed with extreme scepticism. One example is the forced labourers from the Baltic States, who were required to apply to partner organizations in post-Soviet successor states from which they had only recently gained their independence. The authors of the present book were, then, not only concerned with describing the inherent bureaucratic logic of the payment process but also with analysing the conflicts that arose from the applicants’ perspective. The staff in each partner organization dealt with the former forced labourers differently, eliciting a variety of responses. On one end of the spectrum was the JCC, which was able to help prepare the bulk of applications on the basis of data it had collected during previous compensation programmes. On the other end, the procedure in the post-Soviet countries was often perceived to be an arduous struggle through a bureaucratic jungle. Moreover, in eastern and east central Europe, conflicts arose from the fact that certain Nazi persecutees, who had been entitled to payments under the compensation programmes of the 1990s, were not eligible for payments under the present payment programme. Sometimes the sense of struggle was even inverted, such as when the IOM found itself painstakingly trying to reach potential beneficiaries. But there were many applicants who were practised at dealing with the authorities on a local level and not intimidated by the payment programme’s complex bureaucratic structure. If they were dissatisfied with their national partner organization’s handling of their applications, they sent appeals not only to the political leaders of their own countries but also directly to Berlin and representatives of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. Most such appeals arrived from countries with a background of socialist administration, where the right of petition had been an important instrument and appeals were often ‘directed straight to the top’ in order to give the subordinate bodies a push.18 Such modes of behaviour among the applicants were, then, an indication of their social education and evidence that they perceived the bureaucracy of the payment programme as a strict hierarchy. (3) Results and criteria for success: finally, the question of the programme’s results and consequences and how the individual actors interpreted

Introduction • 13

them, as well as the yardsticks of success on which they based their assessments, must be considered. This third level of investigation weaves strands of social history and cultural history together with ethnological and psychological aspects in order to analyse both the intentional and the unintentional effects of the compensation payments on the various individuals and groups affected. An analysis of this kind must consider the ‘objective’ effects of the programme in light of its ‘subjective’ reception and vice versa. It is especially difficult to make general observations here, as all information is crucially coloured by the provider: whether it be the former forced labourers, the institutions participating in the payment process or the societies in which they were embedded. And people’s perceptions diverged considerably even within these discrete groups. Nevertheless, any investigation of the history of the compensation programme, as this book attempts, cannot avoid the question of its ‘success’. It is interpreted here in historical rather than normative terms; the criteria for success on which the actors’ varying, sometimes conflicting, opinions were based are analysed in the individual chapters. In view of the basically ambivalent nature of this undertaking, it was not surprising to find that they spanned the range from ‘the glass is half full’ to ‘the glass is half empty’. From the perspective of members of the participating institutions, the payment programme appears to have been a success – a view which informed the institutions’ self-perception.19 The payment programme was carried out largely untroubled by scandal and with great precision, in positive contrast to the predecessor programmes of the 1990s. The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ not only gained legal security for Germany against further claims but also considerable symbolic capital, which together with the DM 700 million of financial capital ‘retrieved’ from the total endowment of DM 10 billion formed a solid foundation for the Future Fund that became the foundation’s main mission after completion of the payment programme. Similarly, the partner organizations looked back on their work with satisfaction, the only drop of bitterness being the disappointment of the IOM, especially, that its clientele – the ‘rest of the world’ – had been at such a financial disadvantage. Nevertheless, all the participating institutions had achieved their central goal: They had issued the payments correctly to the eligible claimants and simultaneously collected the required notices of disclaimer. However, not all the partner organizations were able to fulfil a second, ‘institutional’ criterion of success that all would have welcomed: their continued existence after completion of the payment programme. To some extent, the partner organizations contributed to

14 • Constantin Goschler

the development of civil society in their countries. Among the unintentional side effects of the payment programme were, for example, the consolidation of the Lukashenka regime’s power basis in Belarus, not least on account of the popularity of the country’s provision of basic social security for the elderly.20 This example also points to the ambiguous nature of a policy that treats compensation as an instrument for propagating the organization of civil society. Among the former forced labourers, however, opinions on the results and success of the payment programme diverged greatly. From the start, they were divided between those who were found eligible and those who were not. The former Italian Military Internees, for example, were excluded from the scheme on the basis of expertise by specialists in international law, commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Finance, despite or perhaps precisely because of the fact that the specialists arrived at their conclusion by applying outlandish historical logic.21 In this way, the German government hoped to prevent the IOM’s insufficient ceiling fund from collapsing under the burden of too many claims as well as setting a precedent to deter former German prisoners of war from claiming compensation from the victors of the Second World War.22 At the same time, alongside cases of persecution that entitled the victims to payments, there were many more cases of damages for which the victims were not afforded any compensation under the scheme. In this way, the payment programme – like all compensation programmes to benefit Nazi persecutees – left a large number of people frustrated and embittered. This included those who decided not to apply, despite their entitlement, as they were not prepared to sign the required notice of disclaimer. Among those who were afforded payments, opinions of the programme and its outcome diverged greatly, according to the amount received, the recipients’ social circumstances and other factors. While all recipients were presumably old-age pensioners, their standards of living differed from country to country. In general terms, a distinct East– West divide could be discerned: the payments had far more perceptible effects in the post-Soviet countries.23 However, the sums paid – varying between DM 5,000 and DM 15,000, or distinctly less if applicants had been included in the programme by means of an option clause – were not usually sufficient to permanently improve the recipients’ standard of living, even in the eastern countries. Nevertheless, a superficial relation was found to exist between the significance of the payments to the recipients and their income levels: the lower the latter, the greater the former. And even to those who were not financially dependent on the payments, the amount received was not immaterial but seen as a

Introduction • 15

measure of the recognition gained. The procedure of issuing payments in two instalments rather than one larger lump sum reduced their symbolic effect somewhat. Moreover, some of the very elderly applicants did not live to see the payment of the second instalment; it was paid to their heirs instead. In Ukraine this was true of almost seventy per cent of applicants.24 Mostly, then, the material effects were limited to shortterm consumer opportunities, or the chance to pay for medication or medical treatment, or to put some money aside for the recipient’s own funeral. As a rule, the payments did not allow recipients to fundamentally and lastingly improve their level of material comfort. The donors were in fact aware that this would be the case, and always stressed the symbolic character of the payments for this reason. The recipients’ opinions of the programme varied between appreciation that anything had happened at all and embitterment that too little had occurred or been given, and far too late at that. Explanations for why some responded in a certain way and others in a different way cannot be proposed with any certainty. But in general terms, it was found that recipients’ post-war experiences, as well as those of the war years, had a crucial impact on their perception of the programme. For many of them it was not the first and only experience of a compensation programme. Indeed, the 1990s had seen a boom in compensation initiatives, resulting in a number of programmes being carried out in parallel in countries including Austria and Switzerland. As a consequence, many applicants were not able to distinguish between the various programmes and hence did not attribute certain effects to specific schemes.25 In one major respect, however, the present programme stood out from other compensation programmes, at least in the post-Soviet countries: many beneficiaries were eager for their neighbours to know about their compensation as it was a sign that their previous suffering had been officially recognized. It allowed the former forced labourers to put an end to the decades of discrimination they had suffered for being regarded as ‘Nazi collaborators’.26 Conversely, some of the recipients’ unexpected, though modest, new wealth made them targets of fraud, theft and even murder27 – and sometimes of renewed discrimination, such as when guards prevented Romanian Roma from entering banks where they intended to cash their compensation cheques.28 As well as the effects on recipients’ financial situations, then, the programme had a range of social consequences. Many non-Jewish applicants now retold their own histories in the light of the forced labour issue. Jewish persecutees did so to a lesser extent as their histories were mostly dominated by the murder of family members; they tended

16 • Constantin Goschler

to regard forced labour as a peripheral aspect of their experiences. But many non-Jewish forced labourers from eastern and east central Europe were enabled by the prospect of compensation to speak about their experiences during the war years for the first time, even to their families. As a consequence, a group identity as former forced labourers also began to develop. Public awareness of the Holocaust had existed for several decades, at least in Western countries, and although some Jewish persecutees were reluctant to label themselves ‘slave labourers’ in the context of the present programme, most had long since overcome any difficulties they might have had with being regarded as victims. The same was not true of non-Jewish forced labourers. For this reason, one particular group of forced labourers now came to the fore: those who had lived in forced labour contexts as children. They assumed a prominent role, not only because of their relatively young age, but also because they were not seen to be burdened with any joint guilt. In the light of their suffering as innocent children, a new view of history was promoted in their home countries that aimed to rehabilitate not only all other former forced labourers but also, in some cases, the nation as a whole.29 On a macro social level, moreover, it emerges that there were basic differences in the impact of the payment programme in the West and the East. While the payments issued to applicants in western countries were distributed in a trickle-down manner across a large number of countries, in eastern countries they remained within national parameters. Consequently, far greater significance was attached to them in the latter countries, though some individuals here, too, developed comparative views via family ties beyond their national borders. The public debate that attended the payment programme in the Eastern countries not only concerned the collaboration issue but also victim rivalry with survivors of the Holocaust. To some extent, the payment programme permanently altered the status of former forced labourers in their countries’ national canons of recognized victims of the Second World War. In the former Eastern bloc countries, this change was linked with a tension-filled shift from a heroic narrative to a new, Western-style victim narrative.30 Thus the programme had an impact not only on the personal lives of former forced labourers but also – to varying extents – on the memorial landscapes of the individual countries. Furthermore, the issue of forced labour was taken as a point of departure for promoting a joint European approach to remembering the Second World War when the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ funded a touring exhibition on the topic to this end.31 On the other hand, some of the partner organizations mounted their own exhibitions that took

Introduction • 17

a distinctly national approach to commemorating ‘their’ forced labourers.32 An unintentional side effect of the programme’s impact on memorial policy and culture could be observed in Germany when the debate over forced labour compensation became a catalyst for the discussion sparked at the start of the twenty-first century concerning ‘German victims’ of the Second World War.

The Contributions of the Volume This book presents the key findings of an extensive research project, begun in late 2007, by a team of twenty scholars from seven countries, on the payment programme implemented by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. It was an explicit concern of the project participants not to surrender to the sheer weight of institutional documentation but also to do justice to the applicants’ ­perspectives – those of both successful and unsuccessful applicants (such as those who refused to participate and those who were not found eligible). The authors aimed to represent the applicants not merely as objects of bureaucratic activity but as autonomous agents. It must be left to the readers to judge whether this has been achieved. During four years of research in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Switzerland and the United States, the authors viewed material that no other researchers had seen before: databases, correspondence, protocols, forms and other administrative documents from the respective institutions, applications and letters from claimants; in short, all the aspects of the payment programme recorded on paper or in electronic documents, including the preceding developments and post-history. The material was often still in its original administrative condition or had recently been entered into the archives without being previously sorted or ordered. Only a small number of documents had already been destroyed due to a lack of means to pay for storage. In addition to viewing documents, the project participants conducted many interviews with applicants, representatives of forced labour associations, political agents and staff of the relevant institutions in all the above-mentioned countries. Lastly, they researched media coverage of the programme intensively in most of the countries involved. Contemporary history researchers usually have to wait at least thirty years to be given access to institutional sources such as these. If an exception occurs and they are granted earlier access, it is usually in the wake of a regime’s collapse, with the express intention

18 • Constantin Goschler

of delegitimizing the regime by publishing all its secret documents. Examples are tsarist Russia, Nazi Germany and the GDR, which are all, of course, quite different entities from the present object of investigation. They differ not only in a moral sense, but also because the present object of investigation includes institutions and individuals who continue to work in similar fields and could therefore be directly or indirectly affected by the findings of our research. They deserve our respect for agreeing to an uncomfortably close scientific examination, akin to vivisection in the contemporary history domain. It marked an extraordinary step for the institutions participating in the payment programme to disclose their documents immediately after completing their operations, especially in view of the fact that they risked damaging their reputations like those involved in the compensation programmes of the 1990s, which attracted harsh public criticism. Moreover, they also faced the possibility of applicants taking legal action, using our findings as evidence. The researchers participating in the project were forced to accept that their work might have far greater practical implications than is usually the case. Under these circumstances, we can only praise the openness that we mostly encountered when conducting our research. Even with access to all the relevant material, many aspects such as internal arrangements, agreements and conflicts remained obscure, and additional information was essential to attempt to make rounded analyses. The unusual framework of the project posed a special challenge not only for the participating institutions and their personnel but also for the researchers. Interacting with the objects of their contemporary history research, who to some extent were still conducting the a­ ctivities under investigation, they were involuntarily placed in the position of ‘­participatory observers’. This demands a particularly sensitive ­handling of familiarity and distance and has an unpredictable influence on research methods. For this reason, we chose not to broaden the ­project’s national base but to extend it in interdisciplinary terms to include members with knowledge of sociology, ethnology and ­psychology as well as historical expertise on the research team. We approached the special challenge of investigating an object from very recent history as an opportunity to broaden contemporary history methods for the twenty-first century. We very much hope that the result has justified the effort. Of the sixteen studies filling four volumes that were the outcome of the project,33 eight have been selected and abridged for this edition, making the key findings accessible to an English-speaking readership. In the

Introduction • 19

first chapter, Henning Borggräfe describes the developments leading to the establishment of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ in the context of the long history of legal and political struggles over forced labour compensation. Subsequently, Benno Nietzel considers the role of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ in the forced labourer payment programme in the light of administrative traditions in the field of compensation for Nazi persecutees, focusing especially on the ambiguities arising from its institutional structure. In a second article, Benno Nietzel also examines the JCC’s role representing Jewish slave labourers in the payment programme and how this affected, and was affected by, the organization’s other, far more comprehensive, activities in the field of compensation for Holocaust survivors. Paul Erker investigates the role of the IOM and how it coped – like the JCC – with serving an initially unfamiliar, extremely heterogeneous and underfunded group of applicants, and traces its trajectory from efficiency to empathy. Further studies investigate the payment programme within the field of tension created by the interplay of national identities, victim discourses and administrative conduct in east central Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Focusing on the Czech partner organization, Stephanie Zloch examines how attempts were made to classify Czech forced labourers as Slavic victims of racial persecution in the context of the payment programme while the country demonstrated its political affiliation with the West. Michael Esch analyses the Polish partner organization in the context of efforts to ensure Poland’s recognition as a victim nation and at the same time carry out a major social relief scheme under the banner of historical justice. Subsequently, two studies discuss the payment programme in the countries of the former Soviet Union, where Western victim discourse was not only challenged by the Soviet tradition of honouring ‘heroes’ but also by the former forced labourers’ self-perception as Ostarbeiter (workers forcibly recruited by the Nazis specifically from the East). Julia Landau analyses the compensation in aid of former forced labourers and Nazi victims in Ukraine and shows how it became a means of restructuring the traditional pension system. Tanja Penter compares the special circumstances of the payment programme in the shadow of Lukashenka’s rule in Belarus with the programme’s context in Russia, where the programme highlighted a particularly strong conflict between national awareness and attempts to adopt Western standards of civil society. The present book is neither a handbook on the payment programme implemented by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and

20 • Constantin Goschler

Future’.34 The chapters comprising the book must remain in many respects mere case studies. We hope, however, that through our selection of aspects and perspectives to consider we have been able to convey an understanding of the significance of the payment programme and by extension provide indications of the basic effects of such compensation programmes. In this sense, we aimed not only to shed light on a historical process but also to provide intellectual stimuli that might be important for current or future projects in the field of compensation for victims of collective violence. And lastly, we also hope to offer basic insights into the practice of transnational cooperation among government and non-governmental institutions, the importance of which is growing, not only in the compensation field.

Acknowledgements I and my cooperation partners Professor José Brunner (Tel Aviv), Professor Krzysztof Ruchniewicz (Wrocław) and Professor Philipp Ther (Vienna) would like to thank the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ for providing a generous grant to fund our research project in the years 2007 to 2012 while also respecting the independent nature of our research. Indeed, throughout the entire period, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and its partner organizations tolerated our authors’ demands to look in every filing cabinet and drawer, despite the fact that this often stood in the way of their work. We are also very grateful to all those who we interviewed and who took the time to answer our (many) questions. The English edition of our study was made possible by the financial support of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, for which we are also very grateful. Last but not least, we want to warmly thank Charlotte Kreutzmüller for translating the chapters into English. Constantin Goschler is Professor of Contemporary History and Dean of the Faculty of History at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. His numerous books on the topic of compensation for Nazi victims include Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe, edited with Martin Dean and Philipp Ther (New York: Berghahn, 2007); Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008); Die Globalisierung der Wiedergutmachung: Politik, Moral, Moralpolitik, edited with José Brunner and Norbert Frei (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013).

Introduction • 21

Notes  1. The Law on the Creation of a Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, printed in Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff (eds) on behalf of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and other Personal Injuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 174–84.  2. See the foreword by Günter Saathoff in the present book.  3. See Friedrich Wilhelm Graf ‘Loyalität für ‘nen Euro’, SZ-Magazin 25, 20 June 2008: 18–23.  4. See Henning Borggräfe in the present book; Michael Jeismann, Auf Wiedersehen Gestern: Die deutsche Vergangenheit und die Politik von morgen (Munich: DVA, 2001); Matthias Arning, Späte Abrechnung: Über Zwangsarbeiter, Schlußstriche und Berliner Verständigungen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2001); John Authers and Richard Wolffe, The Victim‘s Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle over the Debts of the Holocaust (New York: Harper Collins 2002); Stuart Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (New York: Public Affairs, 2003); Susanne-Sophia Spiliotis, Verantwortung und Rechtsfrieden: Die Stiftungsinitative der deutschen Wirtschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2003); Ulrich Adamheit, ‘Jetzt wird die deutsche Wirtschaft von ihrer Geschichte eingeholt’: Die Diskussion um die Entschädigung ehemaliger Zwangsarbeiter am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2004); Claudia S. Weisser, ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’: Eine Betrachtung der NS-Zwangsarbeiter-Entschädigungsverhandlungen unter Berücksichtigung der außenpolitischen und rechtlichen Faktoren (Berlin: Logos, 2004); Constantin Goschler, Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005); Lutz Niethammer, ‘From Forced Labor in Nazi Germany to the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”: A Tentative History’, in Jansen and Saathoff, Mutual Responsibility, 15–85; Anja Hense, Verhinderte Entschädigung: Die Entstehung der Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ für die Opfer von Zwangsarbeit und ‘Arisierung’ (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot: 2008); Michael Marrus, Some Measure of Justice: The Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009); Benno Nietzel, ‘Business finished? Transnationale Wiedergutmachung historischen Unrechts in Europa seit 1989’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 57(1) (2009): 26–50; on the preceding history, see Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds), Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung, 1945–2000: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006).  5. Elazar Barkan expressed this view in a personal conversation with the author.  6. On the development of the political semantics of the term ‘forced labour’ see Constantin Goschler, ‘Sklaven, Opfer und Agenten: Tendenzen

22 • Constantin Goschler

der Zwangsarbeiterforschung’, in Norbert Frei and Tim Schanetzky (eds), Unternehmen im Nationalsozialismus: Zur Historisierung einer Forschungskonjunktur (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010), 116–32.  7. See Friedrich August von Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy (London: Routledge, 2012) Previously, a similar point was made by John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971).  8. See José Brunner, Die Politik des Traumas: Gewalterfahrungen und psychisches Leid in den USA, in Deutschland und im Israel/Palästina-Konflikt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2014).  9. See the chapters in the present book by Michael Esch, Stephanie Zloch and Julia Landau. 10. To paraphrase the term ‘networks of Nazi persecution’ coined by Gerald D. Feldman and Wolfgang Seibel (eds), Networks of Nazi Persecution: Bureaucracy, Business, and the Organization of the Holocaust (New York/ Oxford: Berghahn, 2005) 11. See the chapter on the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future by Benno Nietzel in the present book. 12. Peter Becker, ‘Sprachvollzug: Kommunikation und Verwaltung’, in Peter Becker (ed.), Sprachvollzug im Amt: Kommunikation und Verwaltung im Europa des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Bielefeld: transcript, 2001), 9–42. 13. See Julia Landau in the present book. 14. Mark Mazower, ‘The End of Civilization and the Rise of Human Rights: The Mid-Twentieth-Century Disjuncture’, in Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (ed.), Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 29–44. 15. Jeismann, Auf Wiedersehen Gestern, 179. 16. Cf. Hubert Feichtlbauer, Zwangsarbeit in Österreich 1938–1945. Fonds für Versöhnung, Frieden und Zusammenarbeit: Späte Anerkennung, Geschichte, Schicksale (Vienna: Braintrust, 2005); Stefan Karner and Walter M. Iber (eds), Schweres Erbe und ‘Wiedergutmachung’ Restitution und Entschädigung in Österreich: Die Bilanz der Regierung Schüssel (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2015). 17. Mentioned by Darius Pawłoś (Warsaw) in a conversation on 6 March 2009. 18. See Tanja Penter in the present book. 19. Cf. for example Jansen and Saathoff, Mutual Responsibility. 20. See Tanja Penter in the present book. 21. See the critique by Ulrich Herbert, ‘Wie das Gesetz es befahl: Italienische Zwangsarbeiter sollen keine Entschädigung erhalten’, in Süddeutsche Zeitung, 16 October 2001. 22. See Paul Erker in the present book. 23. See Tanja Penter in the present book. 24. See Julia Landau in the present book. 25. See Paul Erker in the present book. 26. See Julia Landau and Tanja Penter in the present book.

Introduction • 23

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

See Tanja Penter in the present book. See Paul Erker in the present book. See Tanja Penter in the present book. See Michael Esch and Julia Landau in the present book. The foundation behind the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorial site organized the international travelling exhibition ‘Forced Labor under National Socialism’, which opened in Berlin in 2010 and went on to be shown in several European countries and the United States. 32. See, for example, the travelling exhibition ‘Preserving Memory: Slave and Forced Workers of the Third Reich from Poland 1939–1945’, organized by the Polish-German reconciliation foundation and opened in 2007, or the travelling exhibition ‘Total Deployment: Czech Forced Labourers in the Third Reich’, opened in Berlin in 2008 by the German-Czech Future Fund in cooperation with the Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Center Schöneweide of the Foundation Topography of Terror. 33. Constantin Goschler (ed.), in cooperation with José Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts, 4 vols, (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012). 34. To this end, see Jansen and Saathoff, Mutual Responsibility.

Bibliography Adamheit, Ulrich. ‘Jetzt wird die deutsche Wirtschaft von ihrer Geschichte eingeholt’: Die Diskussion um die Entschädigung ehemaliger Zwangsarbeiter am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2004. Arning, Matthias. Späte Abrechnung: Über Zwangsarbeiter, Schlußstriche und Berliner Verständigungen, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2001. Authers, John, and Richard Wolffe. The Victim’s Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle over the Debts of the Holocaust, New York: Harper Collins, 2002. Becker, Peter. ‘Sprachvollzug: Kommunikation und Verwaltung’, in Peter Becker (ed.), Sprachvollzug im Amt: Kommunikation und Verwaltung im Europa des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, Bielefeld: transcript, 2001, 9–42. Brunner, José. Die Politik des Traumas: Gewalterfahrungen und psychisches Leid in den USA, in Deutschland und im Israel/Palästina-Konflikt, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2014. Eizenstat, Stuart. Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II, New York: Public Affairs, 2003. Feichtlbauer, Hubert. Zwangsarbeit in Österreich 1938–1945. Fonds für Versöhnung, Frieden und Zusammenarbeit: Späte Anerkennung, Geschichte, Schicksale, Vienna: Braintrust, 2005. Feldman, Gerald D., and Wolfgang Seibel (eds). Networks of Nazi Persecution: Bureaucracy, Business, and the Organization of the Holocaust, New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2005. Goschler, Constantin. Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed., Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008.

24 • Constantin Goschler

———. ‘Sklaven, Opfer und Agenten: Tendenzen der Zwangsarbeiterforschung’, in Norbert Frei and Tim Schanetzky (eds), Unternehmen im Nationalsozialismus: Zur Historisierung einer Forschungskonjunktur, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010, 116–32. Goschler, Constantin (ed.), in cooperation with Jose Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther. Die Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts, 4 vols., Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012. Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm. ‘Loyalität für ‘nen Euro’, SZ-Magazin 25, 20 June 2008: 18–23. Herbert, Ulrich. ‘Wie das Gesetz es befahl: Italienische Zwangsarbeiter sollen keine Entschädigung erhalten’, in Süddeutsche Zeitung, 16 October 2001. Hayek, Friedrich August von. Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of  the  Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy, London: Routledge, 2012. Hense, Anja. Verhinderte Entschädigung: Die Entstehung der Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ für die Opfer von Zwangsarbeit und ‘Arisierung’, Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2008. Hockerts, Hans Günter, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds). Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung, 1945–2000: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in Westund Osteuropa, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006. Jansen, Michael and Günter Saathoff (eds) on behalf of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Jeismann, Michael. Auf Wiedersehen Gestern: Die deutsche Vergangenheit und die Politik von morgen, Munich: DVA, 2001. Karner, Stefan and Walter M. Iber (eds). Schweres Erbe und ‘Wiedergutmachung’. Restitution und Entschädigung in Österreich: Die Bilanz der Regierung Schüssel, Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2015. Marrus, Michael R. Some Measure of Justice: The Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. Mazower, Mark. ‘The End of Civilization and the Rise of Human Rights: The Mid-Twentieth-Century Disjuncture’, in Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (ed.), Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 29–44. Niethammer, Lutz. ‘From Forced Labor in Nazi Germany to the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”: A Tentative History’, in Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff (eds), ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 15–85. Nietzel, Benno. ‘Business finished? Transnationale Wiedergutmachung historischen Unrechts in Europa seit 1989’. Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 57(1) (2009): 26–50. Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.

Introduction • 25

Spiliotis, Susanne-Sophia. Verantwortung und Rechtsfrieden: Die Stiftungsinitative der deutschen Wirtschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2003. Weisser, Claudia S. ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’: Eine Betrachtung der NS-Zwangsarbeiter-Entschädigungsverhandlungen unter Berücksichtigung der außenpolitischen und rechtlichen Faktoren, Berlin: Logos, 2004.

1 The Long Shadow Cast by Nazi Forced Labour Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 Henning Borggräfe It was not until fifty-five years after the Second World War that a solution to the problem of compensation for forced labour was found in the form of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ (Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’, EVZ), established in August 2000 following international negotiations.1 The negotiations were prompted by a number of class actions against German companies filed by specialist lawyers in the United States on behalf of Holocaust survivors two years previously. ‘It’s beyond anything you can imagine’, one of the lawyers, Melvin Weiss, declared to journalists outside Newark district court on filing a suit against Volkswagen. ‘I have a document that tells it all. It’s a statement by the Nazis, the SS, of all the profits they made.’ On the same day, 31 August 1998, another lawyer – part of a team filing an action against Siemens, Krupp, Daimler Benz, and other companies – announced: ‘We are not talking about recovering lost salaries; we are talking about recovering the profit that was made out of the work of these people.’2 In autumn and winter 1998, the companies concerned and the government under newly elected Chancellor Gerhard Schröder tried to find a political response to the legal challenge. A workgroup led by historian Lutz Niethammer was commissioned to draw up a secret policy paper. Submitted to the chancellor’s office in January 1999, it assessed the situation as follows: In a phase in which most survivors of the Holocaust have died and even the youngest of their generation are looking back on their lives, there is growing concern among them that the unique significance of the Holocaust might be forgotten. … This concern has made them receptive to vociferous public campaigns, even if they are quite differently

28 • Henning Borggräfe

motivated. In view of this, it is wise to assume that those in whose name the US class actions are being filed are ultimately not concerned with money but with cultural remembrance.3

On the basis of this policy paper, twelve major German companies formed a joint Foundation Initiative to offer support for humanitarian and future-oriented projects. Its inception was announced on 16 February 1999, marking the beginning of negotiations over the foundation’s arrangement. The negotiations ended with the German state and industry being assured the legal security they demanded in return for a donation of €5.1 billion to the foundation. International literature on the subject connects this solution with the efforts made towards settling unresolved substantive claims from the Holocaust era in the late 1990s. Thus it proposes that concessions were enforced from the German side by the class actions and threat of sanctions.4 Some of the German literature, in contrast, stresses the importance of German society confronting its past – a difficult but fruitful process that started when the issue of ‘forgotten victims’ was raised in the 1980s – to prepare the ground for the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’.5 While both standpoints highlight important aspects of the compensation debate, neither adequately reflects the dynamics behind it. Furthermore, both focus entirely on the question of why compensation was finally afforded after such a long time. But they do not address other, no less important questions: Who acted as spokesperson for the former persecutees? How and for what was compensation to be afforded? And how was entitlement defined? As the quotes in the opening paragraph indicate, these questions were by no means self-explanatory. How to deal with the Nazi past in material terms was a highly contentious issue. The answers evolved from a long-term political debate in which conflicting views of history and justice played just as important a role as the power relations between the parties involved.6 Neither the demand for profits from forced labour nor the offer of symbolic acknowledgement through project funding was a quasi-natural response to the Nazi crimes. Similarly, the group of persecutees eligible for compensation was not immediately obvious but rather had to be defined. The lawyers quoted above filed their claims mostly on behalf of Jewish concentration camp survivors, and the German economy made its subsequent offer primarily with this group in mind. Both sides were, then, focusing only on a small section of those who were made to perform forced labour under the Nazis. In his policy paper, Niethammer, prompted by the German discussion of ‘forgotten victims’, proposed shifting the focus to forced

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 29

labourers from east central and eastern Europe who had been sent to Germany to work for German industry. Both approaches marked significant developments since the early post-war decades. Yet both – even in ­combination – failed to take the full extent of Nazi forced labour into account. Historians today estimate that over twenty million people were made to perform forced labour under the Nazis. It is relatively certain that thirteen million were exploited as forced labourers in the Greater German Reich. The number of forced labourers in the occupied territories can only be roughly estimated. In terms of legal status, the majority of forced labourers belonged to three groups: foreign civilian workers, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners. Besides these, hundreds of thousands of Jews were made to perform forced labour in special camps and ghettos, and inmates of German prisons were also forced to work in the Third Reich. But it was not uncommon for forced labourers to be moved around for deployment in different places, or to be assigned different legal status, making it difficult to gauge their total number. Forced labourers came from all the German-occupied states, but mostly from the Soviet Union and Poland. About fifty per cent were women. The conditions in which they lived and worked depended crucially upon their position in the Nazis’ racial hierarchy as well as on their legal status. Forced labour was used not only by industry but also in construction and agriculture, local government, private households and even the church.7 Although five decades passed before compensation for forced labour was regulated, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and its partner organizations nevertheless processed over 2.3 million applications. The accounts they gave conveyed an impression of the scale and complexity of the Nazi system of forced labour as well as of the contemporary needs and demands of the former persecutees. However, payment was based on predetermined constructs of persecutee category and the appropriate form and objectives of compensation, which had been formulated and reformulated in the preceding debate. While the German foundation and its partner organizations extended the scheme to respond to many claims that it did not officially cover, 644,826 applications were still rejected, many of which were from people who had also performed forced labour. Countless former forced labourers did not even submit applications. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of former forced labourers who did not belong to the groups at the centre of the preceding debates received only negligible payments.8 The compensation programme’s payment practice, objectives and limits can only be understood against

30 • Henning Borggräfe

the background of the ongoing controversy surrounding compensation since the early post-war years. This chapter will consider the changing responses to the legacy of Nazi forced labour and trace the development of persecutee definitions and compensation concepts, and their reception. These points are crucial for analysing the work of the foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and its partner organizations and the consequences of the compensation programme, as this book sets out to do. Lastly, this chapter seeks to promote awareness of the above-mentioned issues when considering what can be achieved by, and the problems that can arise from, compensation.

Discussion of Forced Labour in the Early Post-war Years In the first decades after the Second World War, forced labour was not factored into the debate over compensation for Nazi crimes. While the exploitation of civilian workers, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners had been unequivocally condemned as a crime at the Nuremberg trials under the blanket term ‘slave labour’,9 this view was not echoed in post-war Germany. In the aftermath of the war, companies facing Allied charges exonerated themselves with statements claiming that forced labour was a normal concomitant of war. They were backed by the German press, which publicized the theory that the economy had been compelled to use foreign labour.10 It was uncertain, however, whether this argument would stand up in a court of law. When in 1953 Norbert Wollheim, a former Jewish concentration camp forced labourer, filed the first compensation claim against the legal successor of IG Farben, representatives of industry urged the West German government to tackle the problem.11 At the time, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany was working on a standard restitution law. But since the German public was largely opposed to Wiedergutmachung, it intended to strictly limit the scope of compensation and avoid payments to forced labourers. The German Democratic Republic (GDR), meanwhile, denied any responsibility for Nazi crimes but set up a welfare system to provide benefits mainly to German communists who had been persecuted by the Nazis. The West German Federal Ministry of Finance, responsible for compensation, adopted the Allies’ strict differentiation between ‘(external) reparations and (internal) compensation’.12 Therefore, under the German Compensation Law (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz, BEG), only Germans who had been persecuted on racial, political or religious grounds were entitled to compensation. Claims by foreign Nazi

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 31

persecutees, which included nearly all forced labourers, fell under reparations provisions, i.e. the interstate settlement of war-related claims.13 In 1953, the West German government gained an additional defence against reparations claims following the London Debt Agreement. De facto providing for the settlement of German pre- and post-war debts, the agreement had negative significance for foreign Nazi persecutees since it determined that claims by foreign states and their citizens ‘against the Reich and agencies or persons operating on behalf of the Reich’ were to be ‘deferred until the final settlement of the reparation question’.14 Such a conclusive settlement could only be reached in the context of a peace treaty, which was hardly possible during the Cold War. When in summer 1953 the Soviet Union and Poland renounced any claim to reparations from ‘Germany’ in order to stabilize the GDR, the West German government seemed amply forearmed against claims from abroad. But no significant demands for compensation for forced labourers were made outside Germany in the early post-war period. Former forced labourers were not widely perceived as persecutees and they had no interest group to represent them. On their return home, most of them encountered scepticism. In the Soviet Union they were viewed as collaborators who had worked for the enemy, and tens of thousands of them died in returnee camps. While Soviet hostility was the most extreme, western Europeans also harboured resentment towards forced labourers. Resistance fighter associations held those who had worked in Germany to be traitors rather than victims of persecution. Patriotism and anti-fascism formed the guiding narrative of post-war remembrance in Europe; forced labour did not fit into this frame. Moreover, to the majority of former forced labourers, who had been brutally uprooted at a young age and bore the scars of persecution, starting a family and building a future posed a considerable challenge, especially if they were now ‘displaced persons’ without a home.15 All these factors precluded the formation of a strong body to represent the interests of forced labourers. Indeed, even the existing victim associations were becoming divided by the Cold War confrontation, and the representation of persecutee interests was being pushed into the background. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (JCC), set up to represent the interests of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in Western countries in 1951, was the only exception.16 But the JCC focused primarily on obtaining state pensions. Here, too, compensation for forced labour played a marginal role. Nevertheless, the JCC agreed to help Norbert Wollheim with his lawsuit in Frankfurt, which ended on 10 June 1953 with a surprising

32 • Henning Borggräfe

verdict: the judges awarded Wollheim compensation to the order of DM 10,000, with interest.17 Wollheim, an Auschwitz survivor, supported his claim by arguing that, since he had not been paid for his work, his former ‘employer’ had not settled his accounts. Wollheim was concerned with obtaining what was due to former concentration camp forced labourers who had worked for IG Farben. But West German industry sensed a much larger problem on the horizon and contested the verdict. The business press had predicted that millions of former civilian workers, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners were set to file claims amounting to DM 60 to 80 billion.18 Thus the Wollheim lawsuit consolidated two opposing positions on the compensation question that endured until the 1970s. On one side, the few people claiming compensation for forced labour welcomed it as a precedent for gaining retroactive payment of wages for concentration camp detainees. On the other side, the defendant businesses and the Federal Ministry of Finance took it as a warning not to risk opening the floodgates by even the slightest yielding. Following this verdict on the Wollheim lawsuit, other former concentration camp prisoners, from Germany and abroad, filed claims at West German civil courts. In the 1960s, companies targeted by lawsuits, supported by the Federal Ministry of Finance, convinced the courts that forced labour was to be viewed as a normal and necessary part of the conduct of war that is enforced by the state, and at most to be settled in the context of reparations policy. Hence the businesses could not be held responsible and further claims became redundant. Moreover, short periods of limitation were imposed, ensuring that it was too late for German claimants to apply. At the same time, it was too early for claims by foreign former forced labourers, since under the London Debt Agreement they could only be regulated once the reparations question had been conclusively settled.19 The JCC soon realized that considerable obstacles were impeding the legal process and in 1954 started negotiating with the businesses concerned just as the appeal proceedings in the Wollheim case got underway. It managed to shift the focus of the debate from legal to political issues, but did not achieve any concrete results for former concentration camp prisoners. The only way the JCC could actually secure compensation agreements was by convincing businesses that they stood to lose more without an agreement than the sum of compensation for the Jewish prisoners formerly employed in their works. This was the case for the IG Farben successors, who agreed to a ‘voluntary’ payment of DM 27 million in 1957. As a result, one-off payments of up

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 33

to DM 5,000 were made to former concentration camp detainees who had performed forced labour for IG Farben and could supply proof of their work. In return, the recipients were required to renounce all legal claims. The JCC only managed to paint such convincingly intimidating scenarios in four more cases: Krupp paid DM 10 million in 1959; AEG/ Telefunken, DM 4 million in 1960; Siemens, DM 7 million in 1962; and in 1966 Rheinmetall was persuaded to pay DM 2.5 million when an arms deal with the United States was at stake. Negotiations with the Flick group, however, remained fruitless right up to Friedrich Flick’s death in 1972. By the late 1960s, expectations had sunk to nothing. ‘I agree that the matter is hopeless and whatever we do is simply a waste of time’,20 wrote JCC functionary Benjamin B. Ferencz in 1968. Yet the JCC had paid a total of DM 52 million to 14,878 eligible parties.21 In contrast, other victims’ representatives only managed to secure benefits for 1,042 non-Jewish concentration camp forced labourers in the IG Farben case.22 At this time, businesses were sued and agreements sought on the premise of gaining compensation for forced labour from former ‘employers’. In parallel, Nazi persecutees from eastern Europe now resident in West Germany or other Western countries were claiming benefits on the basis of the German Compensation Laws (BEG). Furthermore, several of West Germany’s neighbouring western European countries demanded indemnification for their citizens who had been persecuted by the Nazis. Consequently, by 1964 the West German government had concluded eleven general agreements with western European countries, pledging ‘humanitarian assistance’ of a total of DM 876 million to settle all compensation claims. Thus the issue of the wrongfulness of forced labour and the state’s responsibility to account for it in financial terms was addressed in both the case of former displaced persons and Western governments. In both cases, however, West Germany clearly did not define the forced labour at issue as a specifically Nazi wrong. The West German authorities dismissed claims from foreign former forced labourers under the BEG on the grounds that their labour had only been used for the war economy and that therefore no special injury had been done.23 The money provided under the general agreements was distributed by the recipient countries, which were at liberty to follow their own definitions of eligibility and systems of payment. Still, most former forced labourers did not receive any payments. Antifascist resistance and the horror of the concentration camps continued to dominate public remembrance of the Nazi past. Most of the beneficiaries of the general agreements, similarly to German recipients of payments on the basis of the BEG, were ex-concentration camp

34 • Henning Borggräfe

prisoners. Although they had performed forced labour, it was not this fact that made them eligible.24 By the early 1970s, the Wiedergutmachung question seemed to have been settled. But West Germany’s new policy of rapprochement towards the East soon roused claims from beyond the Iron Curtain. Poland was especially vociferous in demanding compensation for its citizens. Here, too, the emphasis was placed on compensation for concentration camp detainees; only withheld social security contributions were claimed for forced labourers. After initially refusing, in 1975 the West German government paid DM 1.3 billion to cover the Polish forced labourers’ pension claims and granted a low-interest loan of DM 1 billion. But the former forced labourers did not actually profit from the settlement. In relation to the pension contributions paid during the war alone, the West German government’s solution was quite affordable, and also clearly marked the limits of compensation.25 In the 1970s, the issue of forced labour began to arise in West German political discussions of Nazi injustice. Church reconciliation initiatives started fundraising for former concentration camp detainees in Poland.26 But from the West German government’s point of view, compensation had been accomplished. Even the persecutee interest groups no longer raised demands. Although up to this point only a negligible minority of forced labourers had received any payments, the compensation case was closed. Then JCC negotiator Ferencz wrote a first-hand account, published in 1979, entitled Less than Slaves.27 The passages in Ferencz’s book on the history of Nazi persecution by labour exploitation and on Wollheim’s legal struggle provide illuminating insight into the nature of the debate in the early post-war decades: at that time, the term ‘forced labourer’ was used only in reference to concentration camp prisoners, and it was only a small number of these who fought for compensation in the 1950s and 1960s. Those who did were born not in the 1920s, like most Nazi forced labourers, but before the First World War. They had been in employment and some had gained political experience and legal knowledge before they were persecuted. Wollheim, then, seemed to fit the template of a typical, early post-war claimant, although his biography is actually atypical of the majority of people exploited by the Nazis as forced labourers.

Compensation Policy Dynamics in the 1980s and 1990s The year 1979, when Ferencz’s book Less than Slaves was published, not only marked the end of the immediate post-war dispute over

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 35

compensation. In the same year, the US television series ‘Holocaust’ was broadcast in West Germany and launched a new dynamic in compensation policy. For the first time, the histories and contemporary situations of victims of Nazi persecution were brought to the attention of the public. In the 1980s young activists from the alternative leftwing milieu began conducting their own research into Nazi crimes. They uncovered the histories of ‘forgotten victims’ who had been marginalized in the course of compensation and remembrance: Sinti and Roma, victims of enforced sterilization, homosexuals, those branded as ‘­asocial’ – and forced labourers.28 Young Germans identified with these groups and acted as their advocates. Hence a fundamental change took place in the dispute over compensation. Whereas previously the few parties involved negotiated discreetly, publicity now became a key factor. Indeed, the debate was extended from just a few Nazi persecutees engaged in disputes with the legal successors of the perpetrators to all of German society. Until 1979, forced labourers were not viewed as a distinct group among the victims of Nazi persecution and nobody saw any need to compensate them. But by the late 1980s attitudes had changed with permanent effect. While the Kohl government viewed the Wiedergutmachung case as closed, critics began to question its very nature. In 1984, journalist Dörte von Westernhagen, writing for the weekly Die Zeit complained: ‘Where it should have been our task to seek out even the most reclusive victim and ask them to accept our compensation and so to soothe their memories, we have made the persecutees into supplicants, subject to time-limits, untrustworthy, and ultimately “unworthy of compensation”.’29 When the Green Party emerged as a political force in 1985, compensation activism gained a voice in the Bundestag. Activists equated the fight to compensate the ‘forgotten victims’, whose suffering was regarded as having been prolonged to the present day, with the struggle to improve the situations of discriminated minorities in West German society. A first draft law by the Greens in late 1985 called for honorary citizenship for victims of Nazi persecution as symbolic acknowledgement of their status, as well as pensions to provide for old age or infirmity and free health insurance for all of them.30 However, most former forced labourers did not live in Germany and so fell outside the frame of considerations once again. The issue of compensation for forced labour started garnering more attention in January 1986. Since the question of compensation had been re-opened, the JCC repeated its claim against Flick to the Deutsche Bank, which now owned the Flick group. The bank, whose reputation was already threatened by the disclosure of findings about its

36 • Henning Borggräfe

Nazi past, immediately paid the JCC DM 5 million to avoid attracting negative publicity. But the settlement had exactly the opposite effect. In its wake, investigations into Nazi forced labour appeared on television and in the press, launching a wave of local protests against businesses. In March 1986 the German ‘Interessengemeinschaft ehemaliger Zwangsarbeiter unter dem NS-Regime’ was founded – the first organized body representing this group. Political discourse on the subject, meanwhile, remained vague despite the fact that a standard reference work on forced labour had now been published – a dissertation by historian Ulrich Herbert.31 Only a few major companies were implicated and compensation was considered a purely domestic problem. At a hearing on ‘forgotten victims’ in the Bundestag in June 1987, the spokesperson of the newly formed interest group called for a compensation programme based on the number of forced labourers ‘who probably still live in West Germany and can be registered: it must be about 1,500 to 2,000 persons’.32 The debate on ‘forgotten victims’ resulted in the establishment of a small hardship fund. But since forced labourers were still not acknowledged by the West German government as victims of Nazi persecution, even those former forced labourers resident in Germany did not benefit from it. However, the debate had further-reaching consequences abroad, especially in Poland. In response to coverage of the developments in Germany in the Polish media, many former forced labourers finally spoke out and became organized, forty years after the end of the war. Most of those affected reached retirement age in the 1980s. The long-term effects of persecution on their health and the years of forced labour missing from their pension accounts were becoming pressing problems. In 1987 the ‘Organization of Poles Injured by the Third Reich’ was founded, which mainly represented forced labourers and rapidly counted 600,000 members. This organization became a political force not only in Poland but also in West Germany, where it strengthened the resolve of West German activists. In 1988 a first forced labourer association was founded in the Netherlands. In addition, organizations of Holocaust survivors newly founded in the United States and Israel in the early 1980s also took up the issue of compensation for forced labour, prompting the JCC to address the subject, too.33 While the debate on ‘forgotten victims’ did not produce any substantial material results, the international response it elicited made it clear that the compensation problem went far beyond the borders of West Germany. Günter Saathoff, an activist working for the Green Party in the Bundestag, devised a new concept of compensation for forced labour in 1989, which abandoned demands for lifelong pensions in

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 37

favour of a more pragmatic approach. Saathoff proposed setting up a fund from which former forced labourers would receive a symbolic payment of at least DM 2,000 in acknowledgement of their injury. In September 1989, the SPD presented a draft adopting key aspects of Saathoff’s concept. But the Kohl government dismissed all demands from the opposition and the Polish government, fearing a revival of the entire reparations debate if it yielded in the matter of compensation for forced labour.34 Volkswagen and Daimler Benz, which had been targeted by local protests since 1986, also refused to provide compensation. However, following negotiations with the JCC, ‘in consideration of the fate of those affected’, Daimler Benz paid DM 20 million in the summer of 1988 ‘to fund facilities to benefit victims of National Socialism, especially former forced labourers’.35 This marked a cleverly innovative move, turning the activists’ demand for acknowledgement of the victims’ injury into a self-assured gesture and positive signal. Thus it contributed to shifting the discourse on compensation away from legal claims to withheld wages and toward gestures of symbolic acknowledgement. The Green Party and the SPD called another hearing in the Bundestag in December 1989 solely on the issue of forced labour to try and break down the defensive stance of government and industry.36 While forced labour was now viewed differently than in the 1950s and 1960s – thanks to the activists who had set out to help all the victims of Nazi ­persecution – the entire breadth of the problem remained unacknowledged. It is true that the focus of considerations in the West now extended to Polish civilian workers deployed in industry in the Reich as well as Jewish and non-Jewish concentration camp detainees who had performed forced labour. But forced labourers from western Europe were wrongly assumed to have received compensation, and no claims were expected from the former Soviet Union on account of the repression former forced labourers had suffered there in the post-war years. Both points were soon convincingly disproved: in 1990, press coverage of the debate in Germany prompted hundreds of thousands of Nazi forced labourers to speak out for the first time.37 Hence the end of the Cold War marked a new phase in compensation policy. Following the collapse of the Eastern bloc and German reunification, it was uncertain how long Germany would be able to maintain its blockade against foreign compensation claims based on the London Debt Agreement. At the same time, the major upheavals and radical changes of the period served to worsen the living conditions of Nazi victims in east central and eastern Europe. Although the Kohl government made sure that 1990’s Two plus Four Treaty could not be read

38 • Henning Borggräfe

as a peace treaty on the basis of which the reparations issue could be settled, with Europe in the process of reorganization, demands from abroad could no longer be ignored in the same way as proposals by the opposition in Bonn. Now, for the first time, the Soviet Union joined the Polish government in showing an interest in compensation payments. In 1991, the West German government agreed to enter into negotiations with both countries. Internal government estimates placed the number of former forced labourers liable to file claims at up to 3.72 million worldwide. In view of this, the government ruled that ‘any possible solution [must be] designed as a purely humanitarian gesture without acknowledging any legal obligation’.38 A general agreement was made with Poland in 1991 to the order of DM 500 million; agreements with Russia, Ukraine and Belarus followed in 1993 totalling DM 1 billion. In this way, Germany found a solution far more economically favourable than compensating all the beneficiaries individually. The money was to be distributed via four new reconciliation foundations in the respective capital cities. Germany’s proposal to apply the narrow, BEG definition of persecutees for determining entitlement was overruled. The governments of Poland and the three post-Soviet countries issued payments above all to members of those groups that were central to their national remembrance, i.e. concentration camp detainees and underage victims of Nazi persecution. While the hundreds of thousands of former civilian workers who filed claims were entitled to payments, they were not prioritized when the foundations distributed their limited funds. They received on average only DM 683 in Poland and even less in the postSoviet countries.39 By the time the reconciliation foundations took up their work in 1994, the dispute over compensation for forced labour seemed to have ended. But it soon returned to Germany in a flood of hundreds of thousands of letters from former forced labourers in east central and eastern Europe claiming benefits under the general agreements. These letters were directed to German local administrations, camp memorials or businesses and were primarily written to request proof of the authors’ forced labour. However, the letters also made it clear that the foundations were not working effectively. Former forced labourers in east central and eastern Europe evidently required urgent assistance just to meet their day-to-day needs. Moreover, it gradually emerged that all the victims of Nazi persecution in the former Eastern bloc were in urgent need of compensation. Nazi persecutees in Poland and Ukraine, the Baltic States and the Czech Republic started voicing demands. German activists took up their cause and assumed the role of spokespeople.40 Realizing the poverty in which most eastern European victims

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 39

of Nazi persecution lived – including many Holocaust survivors who had never received any compensation – Jewish interest groups in the United States also began to take an interest in German compensation again. Rather than settling the issue of compensation, then, the general agreements of 1991 and 1993 served to extend and internationalize it.41 With the backing of the Clinton administration, Jewish organizations in the United States had begun efforts towards the restitution of property in the former Eastern bloc in the early 1990s. In the mid 1990s, these were extended to western Europe. Another new dynamic was propelled by the class actions by Holocaust survivors against businesses operating in the United States. From 1996, Swiss banks and European insurance companies were placed under increasing pressure by class actions, the threat of sanctions and the attendant media campaigns in the United States.42 This development was spurred by Auschwitz survivor Hugo Princz, who succeeded in effecting a bilateral government agreement between Germany and the United States in September 1995 with the threat of legal action. Germany agreed to pay over $2.1 million, to be supplemented by additional payments by several German companies. German businesses that had been in the process of large-scale expansion since the mid 1990s and were trying to win new shareholders on the US market feared damage to their reputations,43 but were spared claims in the United States for the time being. But in 1996 and 1997, a number of conferences were held where concerned parties from the Unites States met activists from Germany and victims of Nazi persecution from eastern Europe. Eventually, an international network was built that launched a concerted effort to support Holocaust survivors in eastern Europe and enabled the JCC to secure an agreement in their favour. In addition, in March 1998, the network facilitated the first-class action concerning Nazi forced labour against the US Ford group, a Cologne subsidiary of which had employed thousands of forced labourers.44 The Ford lawsuit marked the beginning of the development outlined above, which descended on German companies in summer 1998 and led to a breakthrough six months later. Soon after a settlement had been reached in the Swiss bank dispute in New York, involving the payment of $1.25 billion, the lawyers turned their attentions to German businesses. A wave of lawsuits against German industrial firms and banks followed at US courts. These were no longer concerned with the symbolic gestures of acknowledgement that German activists called for, but claimed the profits the businesses had made from persecution. Soon after that, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) also demanded indemnification from German banks for their participation in Nazi

40 • Henning Borggräfe

crimes. The dispute over compensation had flared up on an international level and received almost daily media coverage. At this stage, however, it was confined to a dispute between Holocaust survivors and major companies.45 The actions hit some firms at unfortunate moments. VW was on the point of introducing the ‘New Beetle’ to the US market, Daimler Benz had just taken over Chrysler and the Deutsche Bank was on the verge of taking over Bankers Trust. All the targeted companies denied the legitimacy of the actions but were not initially able to coordinate a response. However, they all agreed that the German government should intervene. The newly installed SPD/Green Party coalition government had written the establishment of a federal foundation to compensate forced labourers into the coalition contract, but the Finance Ministry opposed the initiative and it was put on ice. Instead, on 11 November, ‘with reference to a preliminary talk with US ambassador Kornblum’, Chancellery Minister Bodo Hombach proposed a model to representatives of sued companies that ‘would be exclusively confined to avoiding difficulties for the German economy in the United States’.46 John Kornblum had suggested setting up two industry-financed foundations to issue ‘voluntary’ payments to survivors and support future projects, allowing the US government to help deflect lawsuits. In late 1998, US special emissary Stuart E. Eizenstat agreed to moderate negotiations. When in early 1999 the WJC threatened to prevent the Deutsche Bank’s takeover of the Bankers Trust, the German economy was finally prompted to act. On 16 February 1999, twelve major German companies announced their own initiative to set up an endowment fund.

Developments leading to the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ The statement announcing the launch of the Foundation Initiative adopted the slogan ‘remembrance, responsibility and future’ from the policy paper mentioned above, devised for Hombach’s Office of the Federal Chancellor by a work group around historian Lutz Niethammer. This paper proposed taking a new approach to ‘lead out of the quagmire of legal constructs and claims’.47 It was based on Günter Saathoff’s 1997 concept, commissioned by the Greens, of affording symbolic one-off payments to former concentration camp forced labourers and civilian workers from east central and eastern Europe who had been exploited by industry in acknowledgement of the injustice they had suffered.48 The Foundation Initiative transferred this idea to the Kornblum model

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 41

and took it a step further. Lump sums were to be granted to ‘former forced labourers who were deported under Nazi rule, exploited by industry while confined in concentration camps or held in prison-like circumstances and subjected to racial discrimination, specifically predicating their current state of need’.49 To limit costs, the paper proposed the criterion of minimum periods of forced labour and adjusting payments to the cost of living in the recipient countries. The JCC and the reconciliation foundations in east central and eastern Europe were to assist with issuing the payments. In return, the donor companies were to receive legal protection. The payments were to start promptly on 1 September 1999, the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the war. However, the German businesses participating in the Foundation Initiative were primarily interested in negotiating their legal protection with the US government and intended to work out the details of the foundation later. Most industry players, moreover, were in favour of restricting eligibility even further to apply to Holocaust survivors only. Meanwhile, the JCC and the foundations in east central and eastern Europe were not content to merely execute the payments. Like the lawyers filing class actions, they insisted on having a part in the preliminary negotiations. The Polish government even supported a new class action by lawyer Michael Hausfeld on behalf of non-Jewish former forced labourers from Poland. Despite German resistance, Eizenstat strove to negotiate a broad settlement, taking all the affected parties and points at issue into account. In spring 1999, he succeeded in getting forced labour on the negotiation agenda along with the asset losses of Jewish survivors. In addition, he ensured that the Polish, Czech, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian governments participated in negotiations on behalf of the claimants alongside the JCC, the Israeli government and the lawyers representing the plaintiffs. While this was a considerable achievement, it also clearly delineated the group of players. When the first round of negotiations was opened in Washington in May 1999, German compensation activist Lothar Evers, who was not invited to take part in the talks, assessed the situation quite rightly: ‘Anyone who is not officially involved in Washington now but becomes part of a work group later will hardly be in a position to influence the problem-solving process.’50 From May 1999, monthly rounds of negotiations were held alternately in Bonn/Berlin and Washington, each including a focal plenary session. The most important results, however, were achieved at the individual delegations’ meetings and work group sessions held between the negotiations. The process lasted over a year, culminating in July 2000 with the signing of a joint declaration that DM 10 billion

42 • Henning Borggräfe

would be distributed among former Nazi persecutees in return for legal security under a Foundation Law to be enacted by the Bundestag. The wrangling over the final sum, provided in equal parts of DM 5 billion each by the German government and industry, has been described in detail elsewhere.51 Therefore, the present chapter will focus on how entitlement was defined and payments issued. The negotiating parties held fundamentally conflicting views on the points at issue. While the delegations representing the claimants asserted a right to compensation, Hombach and the initiative’s spokesperson, Daimler manager Manfred Gentz, insisted there was no legal basis for claims. Yet although the German side stressed that the payments being negotiated were a voluntary humanitarian gesture, it nevertheless ensured that Soviet prisoners of war, one of the subgroups of forced labourers that experienced the worst living conditions and highest death rates, were excluded from the programme under international law. Despite the questionable nature of this exclusion, the post-Soviet countries did not offer enough resistance to prevent it. Shortly afterwards a work group was set up to deal with ‘forced and slave labour’ although there was still disagreement over the actual definition of these two concepts. The JCC and the lawyers representing the claimants focused on gaining as much compensation as possible for Jewish survivors of concentration camps and ghettos. Meanwhile, the representatives of east central and eastern European countries demanded the inclusion of forced labourers exploited outside industry – especially those who had been exploited in agriculture – and beyond the borders of the Reich, and less differentiation between payment categories. However, all recipient parties – in opposition to the German side – agreed that payments should not be limited to those exploited by private businesses. This, they pointed out, was not only unjust but in many cases could no longer be proven.52 By summer 2000, it had been agreed to differentiate between a category A for slave labour in concentration camps, ghettos and similar detention sites and a category B for forced labour elsewhere. The precise definition of category B and the question of how to approach enforced employment outside the private sector, i.e. in state- or SS-owned factories, however, remained contentious. The US administration and the Foundation Initiative urged the German government to find a solution to this question. In August 1999, chief negotiator Bodo Hombach was replaced by Otto Graf Lambsdorff, an experienced, pro-business politician. His first official act was to secure the government’s participation and thus ensure that the foundation was endowed with public as well as private funds.53 The eligibility criterion of forced labour for the

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 43

private sector was abandoned in response to the demands of Jewish victims’ representatives. However, Lutz Niethammer’s estimate of the number of surviving former forced labourers, based on information from the claimant delegations as well as historical research, showed that the majority of those affected would remain excluded from the scheme. In summer 1999, Niethammer estimated there were a total of 2,408,700 victims of Nazi forced labour still living. Of these, only about 214,000 fell into category A and 623,000 into category B – under the German side’s definition of the categories – i.e. a third in all. Hundreds of thousands of people from east central and eastern Europe who had performed forced labour in occupied countries or in agriculture and other non-industrial fields would still not be accounted for. In fact, the number of former persecutees excluded was far greater still, since Niethammer had not counted prisoners of war or the hundreds of thousands of civilian workers from western Europe, and made an unrealistically low estimate of the number of those affected in south eastern Europe.54 In view of the advanced age of the Nazi persecutees, the German side increasingly stressed that time was pressing. In summer 1999, it pushed through a motion to determine the volume of allocated funds by negotiation rather than by adding up all potential claims. This marked a conclusive decision to position the payments as symbolic gestures of acknowledgement rather than compensation for individual damages. While the allocation of funds was being negotiated, Eizenstat secured a compromise over the definition of entitlement and the compensation model to be adopted. The German side tenaciously refused to broaden the definition of category B. Indeed, Lambsdorff made a number of public statements to the effect that the treatment of foreigners in agriculture was ‘normal practice’ since the nineteenth century. But the compromise achieved by Eizenstat determined that the funds would be distributed by the Foundation Initiative’s partner ­organizations – the JCC, the five east central and eastern European countries, and another organization for the ‘rest of the world’ – to be limited by financial ‘ceilings’. The ceiling for payments in category A was to be DM 15,000. Persons in category B, which retained its narrow definition, were to receive DM 5,000 each. But the foundation’s partner organizations were at liberty to introduce ‘option clauses’ and so create subcategories of additional Nazi victims eligible for compensation. In this way, including agricultural workers or forced labourers who had not been deported to the Reich, for example, was possible but would reduce the amount for each recipient in category B correspondingly. This model had particular appeal since the JCC concentrated on payments to category A

44 • Henning Borggräfe

victims of the most acute persecution. Although a German Foundation Law governing categories and payment levels remained to be enacted, the basic arrangement of the scheme and the DM 10 billion endowment were fixed by December 1999.55 The intended launch date for payments – the sixtieth anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War – elapsed and a further round of negotiations was held on 17 December 1999. This was taken as a suitable occasion for the German state to make an official apology before the end of the century. German President Johannes Rau declared he was ‘remembering all those who were subjected to slave and forced labour under German rule and, in the name of the German people, beg forgiveness’.56 While Rau’s speech was portrayed as the happy end of the story in the press the next day, it was in fact merely the conclusion of the first stage. Since the scheme involved distributing a finite endowment among claimant groups, the delegations representing the latter essentially became rivals, competing with each other for their individual shares. The ensuing fierce dispute over how to distribute the DM 10 billion endowment was not settled until 23 March 2000. Ultimately, it was not the estimated numbers of eligible persons in the respective countries that dictated the allocation of funds but the political influence of the delegations. It was not only the compensation of victims of forced labour at issue – they were eventually allotted DM 8.25 billion – but also asset losses, the Future Fund, administrative costs and, crucially, how to divide the endowment between the German foundation’s seven partner organizations. In the final analysis, the parties with less political influence, such as Ukraine and especially the non-Jewish forced labourers in ‘the rest of the world’ – for whom the German side had calculated a minimum of DM 1.2 billion but who in the event were only allotted DM 540 million – went short.57 Once again, little consideration was shown for those former forced labourers who were not represented at the negotiations, as had been the case when entitlement was defined. It was not until May 2000 that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) was appointed to act as partner organization responsible for ‘the rest of the world’. The last major step toward establishing the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ was the enactment of the Foundation Law by the Bundestag. The Finance Ministry started work on the bill in August 1999 and published a draft in early 2000. In response to continuing criticism, the Finance Ministry eventually deleted the clauses stipulating minimum periods of forced labour, the adjustment of payments to living costs and the deduction of earlier compensation payments. Industry representatives had in fact abandoned these points,

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 45

along with the planned requirement for claimants to provide proof of their current need, several months previously. From April 2000, the political parties in the Bundestag were only able to carry out cosmetic changes. Nevertheless, they managed to consolidate the position of the spokesperson for Nazi persecutees in ‘the rest of the world’ on the German foundation’s twenty-five-person board of trustees, establish criteria for using interest to offset inevitable shortages, and make it easier for applicants to prove they had performed forced labour. The final arrangement was, then, not unlike earlier hardship funds and general agreements. Each applicant had to sign a declaration that, on receipt of payment, to which they had no legal claim and the volume of which was yet to be determined, he or she irrevocably renounced ‘any further claim’.58 The Foundation Act was passed by a large majority in the Bundestag on 6 July 2000. Shortly afterwards, on 17 July, negotiations were concluded when all the participants signed a joint statement in Berlin. According to Eizenstat, Daimler manager Gentz was still raging just before the ceremony that ‘really a dictatorship of the US’59 had prevailed rather than negotiations. The true balance of power was revealed when the Foundation Initiative managed to press through some major changes to the Foundation Law and the joint statement concerning the realization of legal security at the last minute. As a consequence, ­payments were delayed by almost another year.60

Conclusion The joint statement described the outcome of the negotiations as ‘fair to the victims and their heirs’.61 But even this solution did not stretch to benefit all former forced labourers, although millions of claims expired as persecutees passed away and a far broader definition of persecutees was applied than in the post-war decades or even in the 1980s. Not only were prisoners of war and western European civilian workers excluded from the scheme; it gradually emerged that many former forced labourers who could have been included via option clauses did not stand to receive any money. Even within the given framework, the foundation’s endowment was too small. It was only due to pressure from the United States, exerted through class actions and the threat of sanctions coupled with claims to the profits from Nazi crimes, that the German state and economy were contributing DM 10 billion (€5.1 billion) at all. Without this pressure, a foundation of this scale would not have been set up at this point.

46 • Henning Borggräfe

The various approaches to compensation that had been advanced since the war informed the expectations of claimants to the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ at the beginning of the new century. In the first post-war decades, claimants had primarily sought the payment of withheld wages. No few former Nazi persecutees – above all former concentration camp detainees from Western countries – continued to hope for compensation of this kind. From the end of the Cold War, applications for compensation were linked with hopes for urgently needed assistance to cover the claimants’ basic needs in old age, especially in east central and eastern Europe. Within Germany, the debate on ‘forgotten victims’ in the 1980s gave rise to the notion that compensation should above all provide symbolic acknowledgement of injustice. The latter view, promoted by the German side, dominated the negotiations and formed the basis for the compensation model adopted by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. When the foundation finally started issuing payments in June 2001, however, it was too late even for symbolic acknowledgement for many former forced labourers.

Henning Borggraefe is Head of Research and Education at the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen. He gained his Ph.D. in History from the University of Bochum in 2012. He has published on nationalism, the social history of Nazi Germany, the history of sociology, and reparations for Nazi victims, including the book Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung: Vom Streit um ‘vergessene Opfer’ zur Selbstaussöhnung der Deutschen (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014).

Notes  1. The present chapter is based on Henning Borggräfe, ‘Die lange Nach­ geschichte der NS-Zwangsarbeit: Akteure, Deutungen und Ergebnisse im Streit um Entschädigung 1945–2000’, in Constantin Goschler (ed.), in co­operation with José Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1: Die Stiftung. Der Abschluß der deutschen Wiedergutmachung?, (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 62–147. For comprehensive source and literature references, see ibid.  2. Quoted from Edmund L. Andrews, ‘53 Years Later’, New York Times, 1 September 1998; the previous quote is from ‘Holocaust Suits Target Companies’, Chicago Tribune, 1 September 1998.

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 47

 3. Translated from von Alemann and Niethammer, ‘statement of principles’, 14 January 1999, Archives of the Bundesverband Information und Beratung für NS-Verfolgte, Cologne, Stiftung EVZ, Verhandlungen II.  4. Stuart Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (New York: Public Affairs, 2003); Michael J. Bazyler, Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America’s Courts (New York/ London: New York University Press, 2003); John Authers and Richard Wolffe, The Victim’s Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle over the Debts of the Holocaust (New York: Harper Collins, 2002).  5. Lutz Niethammer, ‘From Forced Labor in Nazi Germany to the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”: A Tentative History’, in Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff (eds) on behalf of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 15–85; Günter Saathoff, ‘Entschädigung für Zwangsarbeiter? Entstehung und Leistungen der Bundesstiftung “Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft” im Kontext der Debatte um die “vergessenen Opfer”’, in Hans Günter Hockerts and Christiane Kuller (eds), Nach der Verfolgung: Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in Deutschland? (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003), 241–73; for a critical perspective see Anja Hense, Verhinderte Entschädigung: Die Entstehung der Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ für die Opfer von Zwangsarbeit und ‘Arisierung’ (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2008).  6. Constantin Goschler, ‘Sklaven, Opfer und Agenten: Tendenzen der Zwangsarbeiterforschung’, in Norbert Frei and Tim Schanetzky (eds), Unternehmen im Nationalsozialismus: Zur Historisierung einer Forschungskonjunktur (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010), 116–32.  7. Cf. Jens-Christian Wagner, ‘Forced Labor in the National Socialist Era: An Overview’, in Volkhard Knigge, Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau and JensChristian Wagner (eds), Forced Labor: The Germans, the Forced Laborers and the War (companion volume to the international travelling exhibition, Zwangsarbeit. Die Deutschen, die Zwangsarbeiter und der Krieg: Begleitband zur internationalen Wanderausstellung), (Weimar: self-published, 2010), 180–93.  8. For the balance of payments, see attachment 10 to the twenty-first session of the board of trustees of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, 11 June 2007, EVZ Archives, 101.00/1.  9. Cornelius Pawlita, ‘Wiedergutmachung’ als Rechtsfrage? Die politische und juristische Auseinandersetzung um Entschädigung für die Opfer nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung (1945 bis 1990) (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1993), 191–97. 10. Jonathan S. Wiesen, West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 1945–1955 (Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina University Press, 2001), 17–41 and 67–93. 11. On the Wollheim case, see Joachim R. Rumpf, Der Fall Wollheim gegen die I.G. Farbenindustrie AG in Liquidation: Die erste Musterklage eines ehemaligen Zwangsarbeiters in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Prozess, Politik und Presse (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2010).

48 • Henning Borggräfe

12. Constantin Goschler, Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), 58. 13. On German restitution policy in depth, see ibid. 14. Translated from ‘Gesetz betreffend das Abkommen vom 27. Februar 1953 über deutsche Auslandsschulden’, in Bundesgesetzblatt II, 27 February 1953, 331–484, here 340. 15. See Pertti Ahonen et al., People on the Move: Forced Population Movements in Europe in the Second World War and its Aftermath (Oxford/New York: Bloomsbury, 2008), 181–96; Jens Binner, ‘Ostarbeiter’ und Deutsche im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Prägungsfaktoren eines selektiven Deutschlandbildes (Munich: Peter Lang, 2008), 393–448; Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 129–66. 16. On the history of the Jewish Claims Conference, see Marilyn Henry, Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the Claims Conference (London/ Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007); on the development of victims’ associations in Europe, see Katharina Stengel, Hermann Langbein: Ein Auschwitz-Überlebender in den erinnerungspolitischen Konflikten der Nachkriegszeit (Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 2012), 108–30. 17. Rumpf, Der Fall Wollheim, 168. 18. On press coverage, see ibid., 187–214. 19. Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 250–51. 20. Ferencz to Katzenstein, 11 March 1968, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Washington D.C., Benjamin B. Ferencz Collection (BBFC), RG 12.004.11, 1/5. 21. See in depth Benjamin B. Ferencz, Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979). 22. Stengel, Hermann Langbein, 224–64. 23. Pawlita, ‘Wiedergutmachung’ als Rechtsfrage?, 362–72; Ulrich Herbert, ‘Nicht entschädigungsfähig? Die Wiedergutmachungsansprüche der Ausländer’, in Ludolf Herbst and Constantin Goschler (eds), Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), 273–302. 24. See the articles on France, Italy and the Benelux states in Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds), Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa 1945–2000 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006). 25. Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, ‘Deutschland und das Problem der Nachkriegsentschädigung für Polen’, in Hockerts, Moisel and Winstel, Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung, 703–30. 26. Ibid., 730–36. 27. Ferencz, Less than Slaves. 28. See, for example, Hamburger Initiative ‘Anerkennung aller NS-Opfer’ (ed.), Wiedergutgemacht? NS-Opfer: Opfer der Gesellschaft noch heute (Hamburg: self-published, 1986); Thomas Lutz and Alwin Meyer (eds), Alle NS-Opfer anerkennen und entschädigen (Berlin: self-published, 1987). 29. Dörte von Westernhagen, ‘Wiedergutgemacht?’, Die Zeit, 5 October 1984.

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 49

30. Bundestag printed matter, 10/4040, 17 October 1985. 31. Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches (Berlin/Bonn: Dietz, 1985); on the role of historians in the dispute on compensation see Henning Borggräfe, Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung: Vom Streit um ‘vergessene Opfer’ zur Selbstaussöhnung der Deutschen (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014). 32. Translated from Stellungnahme Hausser, in Deutscher Bundestag, Referat Öffentlichkeitsarbeit (ed.), Wiedergutmachung und Entschädigung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts: Öffentliche Anhörung des Innenausschusses des Deutschen Bundestages am 24. Juni 1987 (Bonn: self-published, 1987), 95. 33. On the associations in Poland and the Netherlands, see the communication in Archives of the Bundesverband Information und Beratung für NS-Verfolgte, Entschädigung für NS-Unrecht 37; on the Jewish survivors organizations, see Raul Teitelbaum, Die biologische Lösung: Wie die Schoah ‘wiedergutgemacht’ wurde (Springe: Zu Klampen, 2008), 292–301. 34. Note from Federal Ministry of Finance, VII B 7 to Minister, 3 March 1988, Archives of the German Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF Archives), Bonn, Polen, WG-Polen, B.3/H.8. 35. Press Statement Daimler Benz, 13 June 1988, Archives of the VVN-BdA Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, ZA 43. 36. Deutscher Bundestag, Referat Öffentlichkeitsarbeit (ed.), Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit: Öffentliche Anhörung des Innenausschusses des Deutschen Bundestages am 14.12.1989 (Bonn, 1990). 37. Irina Scherbakowa, ‘“Memorial” und “Opfer zweier Diktaturen”’, OstWest 1, (2002): 12–19. 38. Translated from Auswärtiges Amt (503) to Minister, 21 January 1991, EVZ Archives, Arbeitsstab Stiftungsinitiative (ASSI), ZwangsarbeiterStatistiken. The emphasis is the same as that in the original. 39. For details of the payments see Herbert Küpper, ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion’, Osteuropa 46 (1996): 639–56; idem, ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Staaten Osteuropas’, Osteuropa 46 (1996): 758–68. 40. See the articles in Klaus Barwig, Günter Saathoff and Nicole Weyde (eds), Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit: Rechtliche, historische und politische Aspekte (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998). 41. See for example Andrew Baker, Unfinished Business: Compensation and Restitution for Holocaust Survivors (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1997). 42. On this topic in depth see Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice, 23–186. 43. Tim Schanetzky, ‘Distanzierung, Verunsicherung, Entschädigung: Die deutsche Wirtschaft und die Globalisierung der Wiedergutmachung’, in José Brunner, Constantin Goschler and Norbert Frei (eds), Die Globalisierung der Wiedergutmachung: Politik, Moral, Moralpolitik (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013), 121–26. 44. See also Hense, Verhinderte Entschädigung, 102–05. 45. Bazyler, Holocaust Justice, 66–68; Authers and Wolffe, The Victim’s Fortune, 188–91.

50 • Henning Borggräfe

46. Translated from BMF, AL, V, note on the forced labour problem, 11 November 1998, BMF Archives, VI A 2, report on private initiatives, B.4/H.10; cf. also Hense, Verhinderte Entschädigung, 122–29. 47. Translated from Niethammer, note on the first session of the study group for a strategy paper, 11 December 1998, Archiv Grünes Gedächtnis (AGG), Berlin, B II/4, v. 946. 48. Bundestag printed matter, 13/8956, 11 November 1997. 49. Translated from von Alemann and Niethammer, ‘statement of principles’, 14 January 1999, Archives of the Bundesverband Information und Beratung für NS-Verfolgte, Stiftung EVZ, Verhandlungen II. 50. Translated from Evers to Saathoff, 30 April 1999, AGG, B II/4, v. 947. 51. Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice, 243–58. 52. See the delegations’ draft papers in Archives of the Bundesverband Information und Beratung für NS-Verfolgte, Stiftung EVZ, Verhandlungen I; transcript of the first rounds of negotiations, BMF Archives, VI A 2, reports on private initiatives, B.7/H.17 and B.8/H.18. 53. The German weekly Der Spiegel commented in early August, that ‘without this foundation there would be no agreement with Washington’. Translated from Peter Bölke, ‘Viel Zeit bleibt nicht’, Der Spiegel, 9 August 1999. 54. Niethammer to Lambsdorff, 5 September 1999, EVZ Archives, ASSI, talks and consultations, Graf Lambsdorff September 1999 –November 1999. 55. ASSI, ‘Verteilungsvorschlag Stiftungskapital’, 15 December 1999, EVZ Archives, ASSI, seventh plenary session of the preliminary committee; see also Hense, Verhinderte Entschädigung, 158–59. 56. Quoted from statement by Federal President Johannes Rau, reprinted in Jansen and Saathoff, Mutual Responsibility, 173. 57. The JCC and Poland were each officially allotted DM 1.812 billion: Ukraine, DM 1.724 billion; Russia, DM 835 million; Belarus, DM 694 million; and the Czech Republic, DM 423 million. Secret agreements were made affording the JCC a further DM 260 million and the Polish delegation DM 20 million; see Lambsdorff to Steinmeier, 24 March 2000, EVZ Archives, ASSI, eleventh plenary session of the preliminary committee. 58. Quoted from ‘The Law on the Creation of a Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”’, Section 16 (2), reprinted in Jansen and Saathoff, Mutual Responsibility, 183. 59. Quoted from Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice, 277. 60. Hense, Verhinderte Entschädigung, 227–48; see also Benno Nietzel in the present book. 61. Quoted from joint statement on occasion of the final plenary meeting, reprinted in Jansen and Saathoff, Mutual Responsibility, 200.

Bibliography Ahonen, Pertti, et al. People on the Move: Forced Population Movements in Europe in  the Second World War and its Aftermath, Oxford/New York: Bloomsbury, 2008.

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 51

Authers, John and Richard Wolffe. The Victim’s Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle over the Debts of the Holocaust, New York: Harper Collins, 2002. Baker, Andrew. Unfinished Business: Compensation and Restitution for Holocaust Survivors, New York: American Jewish Committee, 1997. Barwig, Klaus, Günter Saathoff and Nicole Weyde (eds). Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit: Rechtliche, historische und politische Aspekte, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998. Bazyler, Michael J. Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America’s Courts, New York: New York University Press, 2003. Binner, Jens. ‘Ostarbeiter’ und Deutsche im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Prägungsfaktoren eines selektiven Deutschlandbildes, Munich: Peter Lang, 2008. Borggräfe, Henning. ‘Die lange Nachgeschichte der NS-Zwangsarbeit. Akteure, Deutungen und Ergebnisse im Streit um Entschädigung 1945–2000’, in Constantin Goschler (ed.), in cooperation with José Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1: Die Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ und ihre Partnerorganisationen, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012, 62–147. ———. Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung: Vom Streit um ‘vergessene Opfer’ zur Selbstaussöhnung der Deutschen, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014. Eizenstat, Stuart. Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II, New York: Public Affairs, 2003. Ferencz, Benjamin B. Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. Goschler, Constantin. Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed., Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008 ———. ‘Sklaven, Opfer und Agenten: Tendenzen der Zwangsarbeiterforschung’, in Norbert Frei and Tim Schanetzky (eds), Unternehmen im Nationalsozialismus: Zur Historisierung einer Forschungskonjunktur, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010, 116–32. Hamburger Initiative ‘Anerkennung aller NS-Opfer’ (ed.). Wiedergutgemacht? NS-Opfer – Opfer der Gesellschaft noch heute, Hamburg: self-published, 1986. Henry, Marilyn. Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the Claims Conference, London/Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007. Hense, Anja. Verhinderte Entschädigung: Die Entstehung der Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ für die Opfer von Zwangsarbeit und ‘Arisierung’, Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2008. Herbert, Ulrich. Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reichs, Berlin/Bonn: Dietz, 1985. ———. ‘Nicht entschädigungsfähig? Die Wiedergutmachungsansprüche der Aus­ länder’, in Ludolf Herbst and Constantin Goschler (eds), Wiedergut­machung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989, 273–302. Hockerts, Hans Günter, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds). Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa, 1945–2000, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006. Hoppe, Jens. ‘Zwangsarbeit von Juden in Bulgarien während des Zweiten Weltkrieges: Die jüdischen Arbeitsbataillone 1941–1945’, Südost-Forschung 63/64 (2004/05): 311–38.

52 • Henning Borggräfe

Jansen, Michael and Günter Saathoff (eds), on behalf of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Küpper, Herbert. ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion’, Osteuropa 46 (1996): 639–56. ———. ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Staaten Osteuropas’, Osteuropa 46 (1996): 758–68. Lagrou, Pieter. The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 3rd ed., Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Lutz, Thomas, and Alwin Meyer (eds). Alle NS-Opfer anerkennen und entschädigen, Berlin: self-published, 1987. Niethammer, Lutz. ‘From Forced Labor in Nazi Germany to the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”: A Tentative History’, in Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff (eds), ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 15–85. Pawlita, Cornelius. ‘Wiedergutmachung’ als Rechtsfrage? Die politische und juristische Auseinandersetzung um Entschädigung für die Opfer nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung (1945 bis 1990), Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1993. Ruchniewicz, Krzysztof. ‘Deutschland und das Problem der Nachkriegsentschädigung für Polen’, in Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds), Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa, 1945–2000, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006, 667–739. Rumpf, Joachim Robert. Der Fall Wollheim gegen die I.G. Farbenindustrie AG in Liquidation: Die erste Musterklage eines ehemaligen Zwangsarbeiters in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland – Prozess, Politik und Presse, Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2010. Saathoff, Günter. ‘Entschädigung für Zwangsarbeiter? Entstehung und Leistungen der Bundesstiftung “Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft” im Kontext der Debatte um die “vergessenen Opfer”’, in Hans Günter Hockerts and Christiane Kuller (eds), Nach der Verfolgung: Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in Deutschland?, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003, 241–73. Schanetzky, Tim. ‘Distanzierung, Verunsicherung, Entschädigung: Die deutsche Wirtschaft und die Globalisierung der Wiedergutmachung’, in José Brunner, Constantin Goschler and Norbert Frei (eds), Die Globalisierung der Wiedergutmachung: Politik, Moral, Moralpolitik, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013, 104–48. Scherbakowa, Irina. ‘“Memorial” und “Opfer zweier Diktaturen”’, Ost-West 1, (2002): 12–19. ———. ‘Mündliche Zeugnisse zur Zwangsarbeit in Russland’, in Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld (eds), Hitlers Sklaven:

Changing Concepts of Compensation and Definitions of Persecutees since 1945 • 53

Lebensgeschichtliche Analysen zur Zwangsarbeit im internationalen Vergleich, Vienna, 2008, 241–54. Stengel, Katharina. Hermann Langbein: Ein Auschwitz-Überlebender in den erinnerungspolitischen Konflikten der Nachkriegszeit, Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 2012. Teitelbaum, Raul. Die biologische Lösung: Wie die Schoah ‘wiedergutgemacht’ wurde, Springe: Zu Klampen, 2008. Wagner, Jens-Christian. ‘Forced Labor in the National Socialist Era: An Overview’, in Volkhard Knigge, Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau and JensChristian Wagner (eds), Forced Labor: The Germans, the Forced Laborers and the War (companion volume to the international travelling exhibition, Zwangsarbeit. Die Deutschen, die Zwangsarbeiter und der Krieg: Begleitband zur internationalen Wanderausstellung), Weimar: self-published, 2010, 180–93. Wiesen, Jonathan S. West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 1945–1955, Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina University Press, 2001.

2 The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ 1999–2007 The Final Chapter of Compensation for Nazi Injustice? Benno Nietzel

Millions of people in German-occupied Europe were deported and exploited as forced labourers during the Second World War. But after 1945, neither the West German state nor the German businesses that had profited from it recognized this forced labour as a Nazi crime or accepted any obligation to provide the victims with financial compensation. It was not until decades after the end of the war, in 2000, that the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ was set up with equal shares of German public and private business funds, to afford the surviving victims of Nazi forced labour belated compensation. To implement the programme, the German foundation cooperated with seven partner organizations. These processed the applications for compensation in their individual areas of responsibility and issued payments to eligible claimants. Between 2001 and 2007, about €4.5 billion was distributed among 1.6 million former forced labourers in one hundred countries.1 This chapter will consider how this formidable task was carried out in practice.

German Compensation since 1945 and the New Foundation To analyse the practice of implementing the forced labour compensation programme, it must be seen in the broader context of Germany’s attempts to provide compensation for Nazi injustice through the latter twentieth century and early twenty-first century. The German compensation system was established in the 1950s, based upon two main pillars: first, the restitution of unlawfully confiscated assets, which began

The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ 1999–2007 • 55

under Allied military rule and was completed by the 1960s; and second, individual compensation pursuant to the German Compensation Laws of 1953 to 1956. This continued until well into the twenty-first century and involved by far the largest amount of money. Under the German Compensation Laws, forced labour was not recognized as an aspect of Nazi injustice warranting compensation. This legislation, moreover, provided primarily for German or formerly German victims of Nazism, and disregarded the overwhelming majority of non-Germans who had suffered under Nazi rule, including millions of forced labourers. The West German government held the opinion that the grievances suffered by these foreigners were a concomitant of war that could only be settled in the context of a peace treaty. But no such peace treaty was ever concluded.2 However, West Germany was not able to entirely exclude foreigners from compensation. In 1952 it accorded the Jewish people, represented by the state of Israel and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a lump-sum compensation payment within the frame of the Luxemburg Agreement.3 In the 1960s a series of bilateral agreements were achieved with western European states on lump-sum compensation payments for the citizens of these countries who had been persecuted during the Nazi era.4 In the 1990s, when the Cold War had ended, similar agreements were concluded with some east central and eastern European states.5 In addition, the German government set up a number of special funds for victim groups who had not previously received any compensation. The best known example is the hardship fund of 1980, which is still administered by the Jewish Claims Conference and supports Jewish Holocaust survivors.6 By means of these general agreements and special funds, the German government managed to ‘outsource’ the provision of selective supplementary compensation without having to change the basic system.7 In all the above-mentioned cases, it declared its compensation payments to be humanitarian gestures, thus evading any legal responsibility. In this context, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ formed a combination of old and new.8 It did not require any changes to Germany’s basic compensation policy. The foundation, too, was based on the principle that former forced labourers under Nazism did not have any legal claim to compensation. It was not, then, recognizing any legal obligation by issuing payments. The beneficiaries, moreover, were required to sign a statement renouncing any future claims against Germany or German business on account of their abuse as forced labourers. But the foundation introduced a new concept of damages to be compensated. Under the German Compensation Laws,

56 • Benno Nietzel

payments had primarily been made to compensate for material damages. For example, anyone who had been forced to end their career under Nazi rule was entitled to the probable income that they had been deprived of, subject to upper limits. Similarly, anyone who had suffered lasting health damage as a result of persecution and violence was entitled to compensation equivalent to the consequent reduction in their earning capacity.9 Hence, compensation for materially quantifiable damages took priority over other forms of injustice. This enabled compensation for Nazi injustice to be translated into bureaucratic procedures and processed in a similar way to insurance claims following traffic accidents. To a great extent, the logic of the German Compensation Laws externalized and abstracted the concrete details of the injustice and persecution committed by the Nazi regime. In contrast to this, the preamble to the Foundation Law of August 2000 explicitly identified ‘deportation, imprisonment, exploitation to the point of extermination through labour’ as injustices that characterized forced labour under the Nazis. This law clearly shifted the focus away from material aspects and towards the experience of disenfranchisement and exploitation, powerlessness and humiliation, recognizing these forms of suffering as damages to be compensated for. The Foundation Law conceded that such injustice cannot be ‘compensated for’ in a literal sense and therefore positioned the payments it issued as symbolic gestures of recognition.10 In a statement marking the establishment of the foundation in December 1999, German president Johannes Rau officially acknowledged that forced labourers had suffered under Nazism and asked for the victims’ forgiveness in the name of the German people, thus underlining the emphasis on symbolic importance, i.e. that the foundation did not answer legal claims.11 Below I will consider the effect that these ambiguities had on the compensation practice and how they were reflected in the foundation’s self-perception and communication. The programme was carried out by an open process of discovery and negotiation, in which the various players held different viewpoints and interpreted issues differently. The international compromise that was eventually reached masked the fact that the various negotiating parties held widely diverging views on what had actually been agreed. These conflicting views, which initially remained latent, caused a number of clashes later.

The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ 1999–2007 • 57

The Structure of the Foundation In July 2000 the Bundestag voted by a large majority to enact the Law for the Establishment of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. The law governed the volume of the fund’s endowment, the use of the fund, the criteria for entitlement to benefits from the fund and the appointment of the foundation’s board of trustees, known as the Kuratorium. Its enactment was the culmination of an unusual process that was not without conflict. Officials at the Federal Ministry of Finance had started work on an initial draft in late 1999, while international partners were still negotiating the details of the compensation fund and legal security for industry. In this way, the ministerial staff hoped to smuggle requirements into the legislation that had already been dismissed by the negotiators, such as minimum periods of imprisonment and the crediting of earlier compensation payments. They also tried to draft the law so that it marked an end to compensation legislation for Nazi injustice and thus deflect all future claims against the German economy and the German state.12 But their clumsy strategy failed as the negotiating parties responded with unanimous indignation to the draft when it was presented around the new year 1999/2000. Subsequently, it was brought back into line with the latest results of the negotiations.13 For the members of the Bundestag responsible for passing the law, in contrast, there was hardly any margin for changing the final draft. They added a few modifications and an extensive preamble, but were not able to amend the problematic provisions for allocating funds, as some wished.14 These provisions placed the parties whose interests had not been represented at the international negotiations at a severe disadvantage. The worst affected was the group of non-Jewish forced labourers from countries not involved in the negotiations, almost dismissively referred to as the ‘rest of the world’. Over the course of the discussions, their share had been reduced to an amount that would in all probability not suffice to compensate all those affected at the agreed level. This was a clear weakness of the legislation but there was no longer any scope for rectifying it. A few general appeals were made to the Bundestag to somehow prevent this injustice from being done but the matter went no further.15 Although the foundation was an international organization, the core responsibility was held by a German team, usually referred to as the ‘Federal Foundation’ (Bundesstiftung), consisting of the board of directors and German members of staff. Since it was set up under

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the aegis of the German Foreign Ministry, it was no coincidence that some of the leading figures were men of the diplomatic service. Dieter Kastrup, Germany’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (born 1937), was appointed chairman of the board of trustees, the foundation’s highest representative. Hans-Otto Bräutigam (born 1931) had several decades’ experience working for the Foreign Ministry and was brought out of retirement to take up one of the three posts on the board of directors. Chairman of the board of directors Michael Jansen (born 1941) had also had a career in the diplomatic service and most recently worked as manager of international affairs for Degussa AG, where he had also dealt with the problem of Nazi forced labour. The third member of the board of directors was Avi Primor, long-standing Israeli ambassador in Germany, who fulfilled a symbolic function and was not involved in the day-to-day business of the foundation. Another important player was Günter Saathoff, who was a research officer for the Green Party (Bündnis 90/DIE GRÜNEN) in the Bundestag and had many years’ experience of working for victims of Nazi injustice. He was given a position akin to secretary general of the foundation and put in charge of its cooperation with the partner organizations.16 The board of twenty-seven trustees constituted the foundation’s international body. The countries Poland, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia held one seat each on the board, as did the USA and Israel. The Jewish Claims Conference and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), acting as partner organization for the ‘rest of the world’, also had one representative each. The US class action lawyers were represented by professor of law and civil rights attorney Burt Neuborne from New York. But even here, on the board of trustees, the international players were outnumbered by a German majority. Alongside some ministerial officials, they included five representatives from the Bundestag and four from the German industry Foundation Initiative.17 This arrangement contained some peculiarities that would only reveal their full implications in later practice. One uncertain aspect was the scope of the international board of trustees’ powers. On paper, the board held executive powers concerning all basic questions of the foundation’s activities. In practice, however, this authority was limited by the regulations of the Foundation Law, the German majority’s power of veto and the fact that the foundation was accountable to the German Ministry of Finance. Even in practice, the relationship between the board of trustees and the German board of directors was not entirely unambiguous, as the two bodies were intended to share the decision making on basic procedural questions and thus have a controlling

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effect on each other. A controlling mechanism was deemed necessary as nearly all the members of the international board of trustees were simultaneously the leaders of the partner organizations. While they were of course suitably qualified, they did not necessarily have to hold both positions. But in the final analysis, this arrangement significantly reduced the potential for conflict between the directorate and the board of trustees, as well as between the Germans and the victims’ representatives within the foundation. While the leaders of the partner organizations sought to represent their nations’ victim groups, they could not withdraw to merely defensive positions but shared the responsibility for the entire scheme. In this way, the foundation effectively absorbed the explosive potential of the compensation debates of the 1990s.

Legal Issues Never before had the task of paying compensation within a short space of time to over a million people scattered across the globe been attempted. When the foundation was first established, directors and staff had only vague ideas of how to tackle this challenge. The initial phase of the project was characterized by improvisation, gradual clarification and learning processes. Members of staff could not be shown the job – they had to actually work it out. The complexity of the task had been greatly underestimated. While it was initially thought that the payment procedure could be completed in just one or two years by the directors and half a dozen members of staff, the foundation later needed to employ up to fifty additional members of staff. The foundation could not commence payments until mid 2001 as the question of legal security for German industry continued to be a contentious issue even after an international agreement had been reached. The German Economy Foundation Initiative demanded assurance of its protection against further lawsuits in the United States before supplying its share of the endowment. It wanted the economic risks reduced and the political climate improved for its business interests in the US market. The German Ministry of Finance agreed to regard the participating businesses’ contributions as business expenses so that they could be deducted from tax.18 Against this background, it was clear that the German economy’s contributions only marked a ‘voluntary’ humanitarian gesture in a strictly formal sense. Without the considerable legal and public pressure from the United States, the contributions would never have been made in this way or to this extent. The Economy Foundation Initiative’s

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spokespeople had a difficult task promoting the foundation as a project for the public benefit and convincing businesses that were not threatened with lawsuits to participate. The overwhelming majority of German companies refused to participate financially. Public pressure and the personal efforts of leading representatives of the Foundation Initiative did little to change this.19 In German politics and the media, there was growing anger at this blanket refusal to share in confronting the past.20 The endowment fund was eventually secured in March 2001 by the sixteen founding companies of the Foundation Initiative – the German businesses with the most at stake if legal security in the United States was not gained – standing surety for the DM 1.4 billion yet to be raised towards the economy share.21 The issue of legal security and the German economy’s contribution to the endowment fund were interwoven on a number of levels. For the German side, the withdrawal of pending lawsuits against German businesses in the United States and a guarantee of ‘legal peace’ were essential requirements for their provision of compensation funds. But the longer it took German businesses to raise their share of the endowment fund, the longer the yet-to-be dismissed actions dragged on. Burt Neuborne, who was personally involved in several actions in his capacity as attorney and who coordinated the cessation of the lawsuits, kept the increasingly nervous members of the board of trustees informed about developments. He blamed the German Economy Foundation Initiative for delaying the dismissal of actions by not supplying the endowment capital as agreed. In his opinion, no responsible lawyer could advise his client to withdraw a lawsuit on account of the foundation before its endowment was in place. Equally, US judges could not be expected to consider the incomplete endowment fund a serious alternative to litigation.22 A catch-22 situation was created when the representatives of German industry insisted that they were only obliged to pay half of the agreed sum when all the lawsuits had been terminated. They abandoned this standpoint after a few months. In May 2001, nearly a year after the Foundation Law had been enacted, the Bundestag finally ascertained sufficient legal security for German industry after the last federal US judge had been forced to dismiss a lawsuit by the higher court instance.23 But the problems surrounding the endowment capital were still not over. Burt Neuborne did not feel that the German economy had satisfactorily fulfilled its monetary obligations even after providing the agreed amount. He demanded that all the interest accrued prior to transferring the money to the Foundation Initiative’s accounts also be paid into the endowment fund. In his view, the victims of Nazi forced labour had

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a right to this money, too.24 He filed another lawsuit at a US court to obtain this interest by compulsion. Industry representatives were only prepared to transfer the minimum sum of DM 100 million interest that had been agreed in the negotiating parties’ joint statement of 17 July 2000. The matter spiralled into a dispute about transparency, on the one hand, since the Foundation Initiative categorically refused to give any information about the German businesses’ contributions and the interest accrued. And on the other hand, the question of when the German economy share of the endowment was due and payable remained contentious. But at its core, the dispute stemmed from the fundamentally conflicting views of the foundation’s role. Burt Neuborne, with the backing of the US government, viewed the international agreement on the forced labour fund as something similar to a court settlement, and the board of trustees as a panel for discussing open questions and unsettled claims.25 The German economy representatives, in contrast, stressed that their contribution was absolutely voluntary, and not made on any legal basis, and they were therefore not prepared to discuss the terms of payment. They even held that the conditions for legal peace had strictly speaking never been fulfilled and that industry’s share of the endowment had therefore never been due.26 Players within the foundation felt that there was no time to continue discussing basic principles and wanted to move on to making the technical arrangements for processing the programme as resolved. A demand by the board of trustees to see the Foundation Initiative’s accounts was flatly refused and an offer by Burt Neuborne to settle the interest matter out of court declined.27 Behind the scenes, the dispute over interest continued for years without obstructing the payment procedure, and the conflicting perceptions of the foundation remained unresolved to the end.28

Who Represents the Victims? The foundation drew up bilateral contracts regulating its cooperation with all the partner organizations. The German foundation representatives were strongly influenced by the experience of the global compensation agreements that the German government had concluded in the 1990s with five central and eastern European countries. In retrospect, these were regarded as failed projects.29 Millions of euros had been swallowed by corrupt systems in Ukraine; in Russia, the chairman of the foundation responsible for payments was suspected of embezzlement; and in Russia and Poland some of the compensation funds had been lost due to financial speculation. Despite appeals by compensation

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activists, the German government had failed to investigate the whereabouts of the funds.30 Not least because of the high level of public interest in the forced labour compensation programme, the leading figures in the Foundation ‘Responsibility, Remembrance and Future’ wanted to avoid a repeat of this scenario at all costs. In view of these negative experiences in eastern European countries, some people called for the German foundation to pay benefits directly to the recipients.31 Indeed, in an early phase, it considered the possibility of using a centralized payment procedure. But in practice, it was not viable, given the strong political and symbolic dimension of issuing payments. It was especially important to the national partner organizations to be seen to supply the benefits in their countries, to defend and cement their – not undisputed – roles as the victims’ representatives. Some partner organizations did not have a good reputation among national victims’ associations or the general public in their own countries and were therefore keen to prove that they were humanitarian and efficient organizations. When negotiating the partner contracts, the directorate of the federal foundation was primarily concerned to ensure that all financial transactions would be safe, even if this meant slowing the procedure down and increasing the administrative costs. The varying national contexts in which the partner organizations operated were reflected in the differing courses of each of the negotiations. Talks with the Belarusian Foundation ‘Understanding and Reconciliation’, for example, lasted only two days. Under the control of the dictatorial Lukashenka regime, this foundation was accustomed to working within an authoritarian system of receiving instructions from above.32 The Belarusian representatives followed the German foundation’s orders without articulating any ideas of their own. At the other end of the spectrum, the Jewish Claims Conference was self-assured almost to the point of obstinacy. The JCC had issued German compensation payments to Jewish Holocaust survivors for some decades and had the most experience in this field of all the parties involved. With great self-assurance, its representatives made many demands during the talks and only reluctantly submitted to the terms of the contract. Although the JCC did not have national backing, it was nevertheless able to mobilize political support at the highest level at any time.33 The negotiations with the Ukrainian and Russian partner organizations centred mainly on technical aspects of the payment procedure, as a result of the German side’s deep-seated suspicion of the danger of maladministration and corruption in these countries. The German foundation tenaciously insisted on its mechanisms for ensuring safe payments, and the Ukrainian and

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Russian sides eventually accepted.34 The Polish negotiators, in contrast, were so unyielding in their demands that they succeeded in gaining the exclusive right to receive and pay out the Polish share of the fund in the national currency, Złoty. The Polish partner organization was working under the pressure of high public expectations. It was a matter of prestige for it to assert itself against the Germans. However, this proved to be a Pyrrhic victory when the conversion of the first instalment of DM 1.3 billion led to one of the worst crises to hit the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. It was not until a new head was appointed to the Polish foundation that its relations with the German side normalized.35 Important devices for safeguarding the payment procedure were written into the partner contracts. Funds were to be transferred to the partner organizations in separate tranches, to correspond with current numbers of accepted applications only. Participating banks were to issue proof of payments, and a retrospective monitoring system was set up, in which the foundation would write to randomly selected beneficiaries to enquire whether they had received their compensation.36 But the foundation did not withdraw entirely to the position of technical supervisor at this point. While the board of directors was legally bound to ensure that the partner organizations observed the legal provisions of their contracts, it was free to choose how to do this. After a while, the German representatives felt that the foundation should also monitor how the partner organizations were processing applications. In this way, they claimed ultimate authority for the foundation. Supervisory teams were formed to visit the partner organizations at regular intervals and make spot checks of their application documents in order to monitor their decisions. The transfer of the individual tranches was made subject to the success of these visits. If the foundation staff disagreed with or could not follow some of the partner organizations’ decisions, the payment of funds was withheld until they had been revised.37 This decision by the federal foundation reflected how it interpreted its role. There was no direct legal relationship linking it with the applicants. The partner contracts placed the legal responsibility for granting benefits and rejecting applications in the hands of the partner organizations. As far as the German side was concerned, applicants had no legal basis for asserting claims against the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’.38 Thus the federal foundation did not have any direct contact with the former forced labourers. But it, too, wanted to be seen as an organization supporting victims of Nazi injustice. Hence why the idea of the monitoring system, which required

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considerable extra organization and funding, might be interpreted as an attempt on the part of the foundation to become more involved with the applicants. It was the foundation’s express goal to ensure that the procedure was fair across the board and that the same decision-making standards applied to all the partner organizations. Increasingly, it saw its role as representing the general interests of victims alongside or, if necessary, in opposition to the partner organizations. To sustain this role, reference could be made to a number of cases in which the foundation’s monitoring worked in applicants’ favour.39 Initially, the partner organizations resented the supervisory teams’ visits and drew up a joint position paper protesting against being monitored by them to the board of directors. But the latter remained firm on all points.40 Ultimately, the German foundation had the last word as it controlled the endowment fund and could simply refuse to pay out if it disagreed with how applications were being processed. Occasionally, the transfer of entire tranches was put on ice when partner organizations obstructed random spot checks, forcing them to cooperate and observe the foundation’s rules. A point of contention fuelling the arguments over the supervisory teams was the issue of who represented the victims’ interests best. Yet even demonstrating support for victims’ interests in some instances masked ulterior motives. By professing that its supervisory checks were for the applicants’ benefit, the foundation tried to conceal the other purposes they also served. One of the tasks of the supervisory groups was to ensure that prospective beneficiaries submitted the required waivers, by which they renounced all further claims to compensation for Nazi forced labour. Many applicants felt uneasy signing this statement, which was integrated into the application form, before they had received any compensation. As a consequence, many applications were submitted with the waiver unsigned or with the corresponding sections crossed out. In such cases, the partner organizations were obliged to contact the applicants in question to gain separate waivers, which cost considerable additional effort and time.41 Yet despite the foundation’s attempts to appear the custodian of the payment procedure, it was clear that its controls were not particularly far-reaching. The number of cases that were spot-checked was negligible in comparison to the total number of applications. The vast majority of applications went unchecked by the German foundation staff. Certainly, if there were indications of systematic faults in the partner organizations’ procedures or decision making, which obviously affected more than just the spot-checked case, the foundation staff asked for all analogous cases to be identified and revised.

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But it outstretched the foundation’s capacities to subsequently check whether and how these instructions were actually being carried out. Hence the control system fulfilled a mainly symbolic function. In this way, the German foundation could be seen to be actively participating, and exercising the control and authority it claimed to have. It did so at a certain risk for the compensation fund’s legal structure: the deeper the foundation became involved in the concrete practice of processing and accepting or rejecting applications, the more it eroded the – formally valid – legal fiction that the partner organizations held sole responsibility for these decisions and that the German foundation was therefore legally incontestable. For this reason, the foundation missed no opportunity to underline the partner organizations’ responsibility and officially referred to its own interventions as ‘suggestions’ and ‘recommendations’.42 In the first months after the payment procedure began, the German foundation made special efforts to ensure that participants adhered closely to the Foundation Law by formulating guidelines and issuing them to the partner organizations in periodic circulars. Yet what appeared to be a strictly top-down process was not without its advantages for the partner organizations. Since they were far more likely to be targeted by applicants’ anger, or even legal actions, than the German foundation, it was in their interest to have binding standards that they could refer to in the case of conflict. In this way, they could pass responsibility on to the Germans. This frequently occurred on a micro level, when partner organizations asked the German supervisory teams to personally explain to unsuccessful applicants why their applications had been rejected. The German foundation, in contrast, did not have recourse to guidelines in case of doubt but had to draw its own conclusions. From this point of view, the work of the supervisory teams formed a crucial interface via which the foundation gained important insight into the application procedure. Many practical problems first emerged from the supervisory teams’ reports and were subsequently discussed in depth by the foundation and the partner organizations, usually prior to meetings of the board of trustees. It was by no means impossible for the German foundation to be convinced by the partner organizations’ arguments, e.g. on the issue of ‘ghettos’ for Sinti and Roma, and for them to jointly defend these against the superior authority of the Federal Ministry of Finance.43 The German foundation always participated in the general learning process that attended the project as well as acting as custodian of it. The two roles were not mutually exclusive, for the simple reason that the programme was a work in progress.

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Compensation as Work in Progress The Foundation Law’s core provisions for determining entitlement were surprisingly brief. The key term ‘forced labour’ was not defined or explained at any length. Eligibility did not depend on the kind of forced labour that victims had performed but on the conditions in which victims were forced to live and work at the time. Anyone who had been confined in a concentration camp, ghetto or similar place of imprisonment fell into category A and was entitled to the statutory maximum compensation rate of DM 15,000 (€7,669). Any other applicants who had been deported to the German Reich or an area occupied by Germany to perform forced labour for industry or public services and made to live in deleterious conditions were entitled to the category B rate of DM 5,000 (€2,556) compensation. A so-called option clause made it possible to recognize other groups of persecutees as eligible, too. This was aimed primarily at forced labourers deployed in agriculture.44 Thus the law left some latitude for determining entitlement to benefits. Later, mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion developed from the practice of processing applications. Whereas the earlier German Compensation Laws had quite unrealistically required applicants to submit comprehensive documentation of their fates, the Foundation Law employed a far simpler procedure from the outset. There was no requirement of a minimum period of forced labour, since it would have been unfeasible to prove. Consequently, compensation rates were not linked to time factors. It made no difference to persecutees’ basic entitlement or the rate they were entitled to whether they had performed forced labour for three weeks or three years. The only rough distinction made was between category A and category B: between different degrees of suffering. Category A applicants had mostly been persecuted on racist-motivated grounds that aimed towards their physical destruction, whereas category B applicants had typically been abducted from eastern European countries to perform forced labour for German industry. The Foundation Law made such rough generalizations by necessity. Any attempt at precisely differentiating between persecutees’ fates was bound to fail because of the lack of evidence available. Nearly fifty years after the end of the war, former forced labourers had tremendous trouble obtaining any written documents to prove their stay in the German Reich. Hundreds of thousands of them had nothing whatsoever on paper to prove their entitlement to benefits. For this reason, the Foundation Law required the partner organizations to try and find

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evidence to support applications submitted without any accompanying documents, and not to simply reject them. Much hope was placed in the International Tracing Service (Internationaler Suchdienst, ISD) in Bad Arolsen, which had been set up by the occupying Allies after 1945 and had gradually built up a vast archive containing evidence of the fates of over 17.5 million people in the Second World War. The German Ministry of the Interior and the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ funded the appointment of additional members of staff to the International Tracing Service to process enquiries from the partner organizations.45 Furthermore, an archive pool was formed under the auspices of the German Federal Archives with the participation of some private business archives as well as regional and municipal archives. The work of this pool was also financed by the foundation.46 However, the success rate of searches for documentary evidence was not very high. The International Tracing Service, notorious for its slow responses, received nearly a million enquiries from the partner organizations by 2005 but was only able to find information relating to twenty-one per cent of cases. The German archive pool found documentary evidence supporting some ten per cent of the roughly 400,000 enquiries it handled.47 In view of the negligible prospects of success, the partner organizations eventually withdrew most of their enquiries, since dealing with them served more to obstruct the application process than promote it. A large number of applications were assessed by means of alternative authentication. If no written documents were available, other pieces of circumstantial evidence, such as unauthenticated photocopies, photos, private correspondence from the Second World War era, or personal written accounts of applicants’ histories of persecution and eyewitness reports could be provided and acknowledged as proof if they made the applicants’ eligibility credible.48 In many cases, it would not have been possible to decide eligibility any other way. A great deal of historical expertise was required to gauge the credibility of the circumstantial evidence and personal accounts submitted. Applicants’ descriptions of where they had performed forced labour had to be compared with existing data. Companies, local councils and municipal archives were consulted to check the plausibility of their information.49 Applicants’ accounts were not, however, merely checked against known historical facts. Thousands of applications prompted new research as they contained information on camps, places of imprisonment and other places where forced labour had been performed of which little or nothing had hitherto been known. The

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Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and its partner organizations also worked on collating the data on these new discoveries concerning ‘other places of imprisonment’. An official procedure was developed by which previously unknown sites of forced labour could be recognized as ‘other places of imprisonment’, so that the partner organizations had a reliable basis on which to make decisions. The foundation frequently recruited the help of renowned historians to evaluate applications, conduct research and write in-depth information on difficult historical questions.50 Although not all workplaces were recognized in the end, the fact that there was scope for ‘other places of confinement’ defining entitlement reduced the burden on many applicants. Indeed, the forced labour compensation project became a generator of historical knowledge: the extensive research it involved uncovered details of the past and provided new insights into the extent and geographical range of the Nazis’ use of forced labour in Europe. The rough categories inscribed in the Foundation Law could not reflect the diversity of the applicants’ histories of confinement and persecution. But there were two devices by which applications could in practice be processed in a more differentiated manner. First, it was possible to create subcategories for approved ‘other places of imprisonment’, which were similar but not equal to concentration camps and ghettos. Applicants in these subcategories were eligible for a lesser rate of compensation than the highest. Partner organizations opted for this procedure not least on account of the limited amount of funds.51 The second device was the so-called option clause, which made it possible to account for certain persecutee groups who had not been represented at the international negotiations. They were entitled to a reduced rate of compensation, provided there were still sufficient funds after payments to beneficiaries of categories A and B had been made. This device aimed primarily to compensate the many forced labourers in German agriculture, who received particularly vigorous support from the Polish partner organization. By using these subcategories and option clauses, the partner organizations were able to an extent to overcome the strict dual categorization provided for by the Foundation Law and replace it with a graded system of compensation rates ranging from a maximum of DM 15,000 to a few hundred marks. The Polish, Belarusian and Czech partner organizations made especially extensive use of the option clause. Thus it was possible for the partner organizations to adjust the compensation practice to suit their own purposes and to pursue individual ideas of historical justice. At one end of the conceptual spectrum was the Jewish

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Claims Conference, which focused on victims of the gravest persecution who fell into category A and made little use of option clauses and subcategories; at the other end, the Polish partner organization, which issued over seventy per cent of its payments to beneficiaries of the option clause.52 The goal of the Polish partner organization was to include as many persecutees as possible in the compensation programme, even if many of them received only quite small payments as a result. The scope for flexibility was, however, limited by some hard and fast boundaries. The foundations for these had been laid by political pointers given in the preliminary stages of the foundation’s establishment, and which later affected the project’s practice. While forced labourers from western European countries were not explicitly excluded from the compensation scheme, the general view prevailed that they had not been subjected to the same inhuman living conditions as forced labourers of Slavic origins. Applicants from western Europe were therefore required to provide documentary proof of their maltreatment in every individual case, which was rarely possible.53 Consequently, few such applications were successful, as politically intended. The highest obstacles were put in the paths of applicants who had performed forced labour as prisoners of war. The foundation was not intended to compensate them at all. Their case touched on a fundamental principle of German compensation policy: the need to differentiate between common phenomena of war, which in the German view included the forced labour by prisoners of war in the German Reich, and genuine Nazi injustice. Compensating prisoners of war would, moreover, have triggered conflicts in domestic politics. These were presaged by demands voiced in the Bundestag for compensation for German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union in return for the foundation’s compensation.54 The largest group to be excluded from the scheme was that of Italian Military Internees (IMI).55 Following Italy’s occupation in 1943, members of the Italian army were taken prisoner, forcibly returned to civilian status and made to perform forced labour in the German Reich, where they lived in catastrophic conditions. The IMI had neither had the benefit of the legal status of prisoners of war nor the relatively ‘privileged’ position which the compensation programme presumed western European forced labourers to have had. Therefore, the board of directors and the partner organization responsible for them, the IOM, initially presumed they would be eligible for benefits.56 But the number of applications from former military internees was far greater than expected. Compensation for the IMI group threatened to break the back

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of the IOM’s completely inadequate budget, and the very architecture of the foundation scheme along with it. In view of the potentially far-reaching consequences, the board of directors left it up to the German government to decide the case of the IMI. The government commissioned a report under international law, which found that the IMI were not entitled to benefits under the Foundation Law.57 The report’s central argument was that the Nazi regime had acted against international law by imposing civilian status on the military internees and that this status was therefore invalid. In legal terms, then, the internees had remained prisoners of war. Not surprisingly, the report encountered fierce criticisms. Representatives of the German foundation were among those who found it absurd to cite the invalidity of criminal Nazi acts as grounds for declaring persons not eligible for compensation.58 After all, the IMI had suffered through their loss of status as prisoners of war. Nevertheless, the board of directors did not take a stand against the decision and the IMI – a group of victims of the gravest persecution, which was not compensated by any later schemes either – remained excluded from the programme. This decision placed a firm question mark over the forced labour compensation project’s claim to tie up all the remaining loose ends of compensation for Nazi injustice and dealt a heavy blow to the foundation’s image as a pro-victim organization.

Finding an Exit Strategy When the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ compensation programme was launched, the sum to be distributed had been determined but not the number of recipients. To ensure that payments did not exceed the available means, shares of the fund were issued in two instalments. The second instalment could be adjusted to the given circumstances and reduced if necessary. The transition to the second instalment therefore marked a crucial break. For a matter of years, the application procedure had been an open process that had prompted in-depth investigations into evidence given, historical research into previously unknown places and forms of forced labour, and the extension of benefit categories by subcategories and option clauses. In view of the now limited life expectancy of the large majority of applicants, a strategy was needed by which the many loose ends of the procedure could be gathered together. In order to proceed with the second instalment, all questions concerning eligibility had to be clarified and all submitted applications processed. Any new

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information that subsequently emerged could no longer be taken into consideration.59 The transition to the second instalment also raised the difficult question of what to do with the interest that the endowment capital had accrued. This interest had remained at the disposal of the German foundation and eventually amounted to over €300 million. Some of the interest had already been earmarked for specific purposes, such as the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, under the Foundation Law. It had also been determined at an early stage that interest should be used to supplement the IOM’s hopelessly deficient budget. In June 2004 the board of trustees adopted a model that guaranteed payments to applicants falling into the statutory categories of compensation, of the highest rates wherever possible, and that prioritized the first category over the second where necessary. The IOM profited most from this model of distribution, receiving an additional €150 million. The Jewish Claims Conference, which served an especially high number of beneficiaries of the first category, was accorded a further €135 million; the Russian partner organizations gained €16 million. The distribution of the interest thus considerably readjusted the allocation of means as agreed during the international negotiations.60 Contrary to requirements, many cases remained undecided even after the transition to the second instalment had taken place, partly as a consequence of inheritance regulations. Eligible persons who had died since 16 February 1999, when the foundation project was announced, did not forfeit their claims but left them to their surviving spouses or children. If applicants died during the course of the procedure, then partner organizations had to reopen the case to check the titles to the inheritance and process any appeals against their decisions. A vicious circle evolved in which delays thus caused resulted in ever more applicants passing away before they had received the second instalment, which in turn caused further delays. In some cases, applicants could no longer be reached nor their benefits transferred, presumably because they had moved or died and the partner organizations had not been notified.61 Finally, a ruling by the Bundestag in August 2004 that all entitlements would expire after 30 September 2006 put a decisive brake on the procedure.62 The partner organizations were permitted to issue payments after the deadline, if they could provide reasonable justification, until the end of the year. Thereafter no more payments were possible, even to persons whose applications had already been approved, whatever the reason for the delay so far.63 The remaining funds, which amounted to some €40 million, were not used for individual compensation but went toward humanitarian projects in aid of victims of Nazism.

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The Final Chapter? The question of whether the forced labour foundation’s work brought German compensation for Nazi injustice to a conclusion can be addressed on a number of levels. With regard to legal security for German businesses, the situation is clear. Since the establishment of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, not one action against a German company on grounds of Nazi injustice has been successful; all pending lawsuits were dismissed or withdrawn by 2009.64 As far as the German economy is concerned, then, the matter is closed. The actions by Italian Military Internees against the Federal German Republic, which were declared admissible in several spectacular rulings by the highest court of appeal in Italy between 2004 and 2008, also failed. Germany brought the matter before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, pleading conventional sovereign immunity. In February 2012 the ICJ ruled that courts outside Germany could not sentence the German state to pay compensation for victims of Nazism. In a financial sense, Germany’s work towards compensation continues in other areas. In 2013 the Jewish Claims Conference was able to negotiate an extensive programme to secure home care for Holocaust survivors with the German government, and Stuart Eizenstat leading the negotiations.65 The focus of German policy towards the victims of Nazism thus shifted from providing financial compensation to social welfare schemes. These developments did not garner much public attention, as the matter had lost much of its social and political urgency. The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ had harnessed and absorbed the dynamics of the restitution debates of the 1990s, not only by the volume of its endowment but also, and not least, by the ambiguities which lent the project flexibility. In this way, the vociferous claimant groups participating in the international negotiations had been integrated into the foundation without having to agree on everything they did or what the point of the whole scheme was. In practice, the provisions for eligibility were flexible enough to allow the partner organizations to place different emphases in their work, in keeping with their individual ideas on historical justice. Many victims, for whom no provision was made in the Foundation Law, became beneficiaries nevertheless thanks to this flexibility, even though some clear boundaries existed and some persecutee groups remained arbitrarily excluded. In summary, two political evaluations can be made: in a positive sense, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ was flexible enough to reconcile the seemingly incompatible.

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But from a critical point of view, it might be seen to have effectively silenced the conflicts and debates of the 1990s surrounding Nazi injustice long before all the questions had been answered or all the problems resolved.

Benno Nietzel is Lecturer in Political History at Bielefeld University. His research interests include transitional justice, German-Jewish history, the history of Nazi Germany and media history. His Ph.D. thesis on the history of Jewish entrepreneurs from Frankfurt am Main was published as Handeln und Überleben: Jüdische Unternehmer aus Frankfurt am Main 1924–1964 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012).

Notes  1. See the official report by the foundation: Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff (eds) on behalf of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).  2. Constantin Goschler, Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008); Ulrich Herbert, ‘Nicht entschädigungsfähig? Die Wiedergutmachungsansprüche der Ausländer’, in Ludolf Herbst and Constantin Goschler (eds), Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), 273–302; Cornelius Pawlita, ‘Wiedergutmachung’ als Rechtsfrage? Die politische und juristische Auseinandersetzung um Entschädigung für die Opfer nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung (1945 bis 1990), (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1993); Hans Günter Hockerts, ‘Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa: Eine einführende Skizze’, in Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds), Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa 1945–2000 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), 7–58.  3. Nana Sagi, German Reparations: A History of the Negotiations (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1980); Ronald W. Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World: A History of the Claims Conference, 2nd ed. (London: Cass, 2001).  4. Susanna Schrafstetter, ‘The Diplomacy of Wiedergutmachung: Memory, the Cold War, and the Western European Victims of Nazism 1956–64’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 17(3) (2003): 459–79.  5. Herbert Küpper, ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Staaten Osteuropas’, Osteuropa 46 (1996): 758–68; idem, ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion’, Osteuropa 46 (1996): 639–56.

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 6. Marilyn Henry, Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the Claims Conference (London/Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007).  7. José Brunner, Norbert Frei and Constantin Goschler, ‘Komplizierte Lernprozesse: Zur Geschichte und Aktualität der Wiedergutmachung’, in Norbert Frei, José Brunner and Constantin Goschler (eds), Die Praxis der Wiedergutmachung: Geschichte, Erfahrung und Wirkung in Deutschland und Israel (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009), 30–32.  8. See also Benno Nietzel, ‘Business finished? Transnationale Wieder­ gutmachung historischen Unrechts in Europa seit 1989’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 57(1) (2009): 32–33.  9. Walter Brunn, Hans Giessler and Heinz Klee, Das Bundesentschädigungsgesetz, vol. 1, (Munich: Beck, 1981); Hans Giessler, Otto Gnirs and Richard Hebenstreit, Das Bundesentschädigungsgesetz, vol. 2 (Munich: Beck, 1983). 10. ‘The Law on the Creation of a ‘Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, printed in Jansen and Saathoff, Mutual Responsibility, 174–84. 11. Statement by the German president, ibid., 173. 12. See Henning Borggräfe in the present book. 13. Stuart Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (New York: Public Affairs, 2003). 14. Draft of the Foundation Law, 7 April 2000, Bundestag printed matter, BT 193/00 and 14/3758. 15. German Bundestag, stenographic reports, 14th term, 114th session, 6 July 2000, 10751–70. 16. Minutes of the second meeting of the board of trustees, 20 September 2000, EVZ Archives, 105.00; see also Matthias Arning, Späte Abrechnung: Über Zwangsarbeiter, Schlußstriche und Berliner Verständigungen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2001), 122–23. 17. Jansen and Saathoff, Mutual Responsibility, 225–28. 18. Anja Hense, Verhinderte Entschädigung: Die Entstehung der Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ für die Opfer von Zwangsarbeit und ‘Arisierung’ (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2008). 19. German Bundestag, stenographic reports, 14th term, 114th session, 6 July 2000, 10751–70. 20. Janosch Steuwer, ‘Das Paradox der gesellschaftlichen Selbstaufklärung: Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung und öffentliche Meinung in Deutschland’, in Constantin Goschler (ed.), in cooperation with José Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts: Die Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ und ihre Partnerorganisationen, vol. 1: Die Stiftung: Der Abschluß der deutschen Wiedergutmachung? (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 148–234. 21. Susanne-Sophia Spiliotis, Verantwortung und Rechtsfrieden: Die Stiftungsinitative der deutschen Wirtschaft, (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2003), 126–29. 22. Minutes of the fourth meeting of the board of trustees, 24–25 January 2001, EVZ Archives, 105.00. 23. John Authers and Richard Wolffe, The Victim’s Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle over the Debts of the Holocaust (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), 322–349;

The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ 1999–2007 • 75

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

German Bundestag, stenographic reports, 14th term, 172nd session, 30 May 2001, 16847–58. Minutes of the sixth meeting of the board of trustees, 21 June 2001, EVZ Archives, 105.00. Note on Neuborne memo for plaintiff attorneys, 5 March 2002, EVZ Archives, 104.00; Burt Neuborne to Dieter Kastrup, 9 April 2002, ibid. Manfred Gentz to Dieter Kastrup, 19 March 2002, EVZ Archives, 104.00. Minutes of the eighth meeting of the board of trustees, 20–21 February 2002, EVZ Archives 105.00. Note on Neuborne lawsuit, 22 March 2002, EVZ Archives, 104.00. Küpper, ‘Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion’, 651. See Henning Borggräfe in the present book. Minutes of the fourth meeting of the board of trustees, 24–25 January 2001, EVZ Archives 105.00. See Tanja Penter in the present book. Note on basic legal questions concerning the partner contracts, 22 October 2000, EVZ Archives, 501.00. See Tanja Penter and Julia Landau in the present book. See Michael Esch in the present book. Memo: ‘The foundation’s control mission – procedures’, 18 November 2000, EVZ, 540.00. Guidelines for revisions, 2nd draft, 13 May 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.00; Note on faulty decisions, 21 March 2002, EVZ Archives, 530.00. Federal Ministry of Justice to Günter Saathoff, 26 October 2000, EVZ Archives, 501.00; Federal Ministry of Finance to Günter Saathoff, 17 May 2005, EVZ Archives, 601.00. Statement on the position paper of the partner organizations, 3 September 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.00. Ibid. Note of 28 January 2003, EVZ Archives, 540.00. Note on revision procedures, not dated, EVZ Archives, 540.00. See Paul Erker in the present book. Jansen and Saathoff, Mutual Responsibility, 114–25. Federal Ministry of the Interior to German embassy, Kiev, 16 August 2000, EVZ Archives, 620.00; note on visit to ISD Bad Arolsen on 16 November 2000, ibid. ‘Help for former forced laborers in search for documentary evidence’, draft version, 25 June 2001, EVZ Archives, 620.00. ISD Bad Arolsen to Günter Saathoff, 31 January 2005, EVZ Archives 620.00; Fifth government report on the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, 21 July 2005, Bundestag printed matter 15/5936. Circular to the partner organizations: ‘Information on the federal foundation’, 27 August 2003, EVZ Archives, 530.00. Circular to the partner organizations: ‘Some questions and results of the meeting of 19 February 2002 and the meeting of the board of trustees of 20 February 2002’, EVZ Archives, 530.00.

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50. Minutes of the third meeting of the board of trustees, 2 November 2000, EVZ Archives, 105.00; Note on open questions regarding ‘other camps’ and other historical questions, 18 November 2002, EVZ Archives, 505.02; Note on ‘other camps’ as of 2 March 2004, ibid. 51. Memo: ‘“Other camps” – legal premises: two readings of the foundation law’, not dated, EVZ Archives, 505.02. 52. See Michael Esch in the present book. 53. Note on the eligibility of ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ forced laborers, 27 December 2000, EVZ Archives, 501.00; Memo: ‘Eligibility of Western European forced laborers’, 20 August 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.00. 54. Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 466–67; Nietzel, ‘Business finished’, 39. 55. On the following, see also Paul Erker in the present book. 56. Federal Ministry of Finance to Hans-Otto Bräutigam, 9 January 2001, EVZ Archives, 660.00/10. 57. Christian Tomuschat: ‘Eligibility of Italian Military Internees According to the Foundation Law’, 31 July 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.00. 58. Internal Assessment: ‘Legal Status of Italian Military Internees and Eligibility According to the Foundation Law’, not dated, EVZ Archives, 660.00/10. 59. Memo: ‘Thoughts on the completion of the first instalment and the transition to the second instalment’, 21 January 2003, EVZ Archives, 502.00. 60. Minutes of the twelfth meeting of the board of trustees, 2–3 April 2003 (attachment 2), EVZ Archives, 105.00; minutes of the fifteenth meeting of the board of trustees, 23–24 June 2004, ibid. 61. Note on transition to the second instalment, 21 January 2003, EVZ Archives, 502.00. 62. Third amendment to the Foundation Law, 19 August 2004, Bundesgesetzblatt, Part 1, 2166. 63. Circular to the partner organizations: ‘Significance of the forfeiture deadline’, 23 February 2005, EVZ Archives 104.00. 64. Eleventh government report on legal security for German enterprises in connection with the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, 15 April 2010, Bundestag printed matter 17/1398. 65. http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/holocaust-ueberlebende100.html.

Bibliography Arning, Matthias. Späte Abrechnung: Über Zwangsarbeiter, Schlußstriche und Berliner Verständigungen, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2001. Authers, John and Richard Wolffe. The Victim’s Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle over the Debts of the Holocaust, New York: Harper Collins, 2002. Brunn, Walter, Hans Giessler and Heinz Klee. Das Bundesentschädigungsgesetz, vol. 1, Munich: Beck, 1981. Brunner, José, Norbert Frei and Constantin Goschler. ‘Komplizierte Lernprozesse: Zur Geschichte und Aktualität der Wiedergutmachung’, in Norbert Frei, José Brunner and Constantin Goschler (eds), Die Praxis der

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Wiedergutmachung: Geschichte, Erfahrung und Wirkung in Deutschland und Israel, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009, 9–47. Eizenstat, Stuart. Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II, New York: Public Affairs, 2003. Giessler, Hans, Otto Gnirs and Richard Hebenstreit. Das Bundesentschädi­ gungsgesetz, vol. 2, Munich: Beck, 1983. Goschler, Constantin. Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed., Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008. Henry, Marilyn. Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the Claims Conference, London/Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007. Hense, Anja. Verhinderte Entschädigung: Die Entstehung der Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ für die Opfer von Zwangsarbeit und ‘Arisierung’, Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2008. Herbert, Ulrich. ‘Nicht entschädigungsfähig? Die Wiedergutmachungsansprüche der Ausländer’, in Ludolf Herbst and Constantin Goschler (eds), Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989, 273–302. Hockerts, Hans Günter. ‘Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa: Eine einführende Skizze’, in Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds), Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa, 1945–2000, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006, 7–58. Jansen, Michael and Günter Saathoff (eds) on behalf of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Küpper, Herbert. ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion’, Osteuropa 46 (1996): 639–56. ———. ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Staaten Osteuropas’, Osteuropa 46 (1996): 758–68. Nietzel, Benno. ‘Business finished? Transnationale Wiedergutmachung historischen Unrechts in Europa seit 1989’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 57(1) (2009): 26–50. Pawlita, Cornelius. ‘Wiedergutmachung’ als Rechtsfrage? Die politische und juristische Auseinandersetzung um Entschädigung für die Opfer nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung (1945 bis 1990), Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1993. Sagi, Nana. German Reparations: A History of the Negotiations, Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1980. Schrafstetter, Susanna. ‘The Diplomacy of Wiedergutmachung: Memory, the Cold War, and the Western European Victims of Nazism 1956–64’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 17(3) (2003): 459–79. Spiliotis, Susanne-Sophia. Verantwortung und Rechtsfrieden: Die Stiftungsinitative der deutschen Wirtschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2003. Steuwer, Janosch. ‘Das Paradox der gesellschaftlichen Selbstaufklärung: Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung und öffentliche Meinung in Deutschland’, in Constantin Goschler (ed.), in cooperation with José Brunner, Krzysztof

78 • Benno Nietzel

Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1: Die Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ und ihre Partnerorganisationen, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012, 148–234. Zweig, Ronald W. German Reparations and the Jewish World: A History of the Claims Conference, 2nd ed., London: Cass, 2001.

3 The Jewish Claims Conference and Compensation for Nazi Forced Labour 1951–2008 Benno Nietzel

The Jewish Claims Conference (JCC) stood apart from the other partner organizations of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ for a number of reasons. It existed long before compensation for forced labourers began to be negotiated, and this was only one of many issues it dealt with. Moreover, it continued to exist, and to negotiate German Wiedergutmachung, after compensation payments had been made. Hence, this chapter will place Germany’s compensation programme for forced labour in the broader context of indemnification for Jewish victims of Nazism, and the history and activities of the JCC. The key questions it will address are what the forced labour compensation programme signified for the Claims Conference, what role the organization played in negotiating and implementing the programme and what repercussions this had for its work and institutional identity.1

From Claimant to Agent The Jewish Claims Conference was established in 1951 as an umbrella organization for the major Jewish associations in New York. Its objective was to claim substantive compensation from the two German states, alongside the Israeli state, for the destruction of Jewish life and culture in Europe under Nazism. Under the Luxembourg Agreement of 1952, the organization received DM 450 million from the Federal Republic of Germany, which it used to fund Jewish survivors’ welfare schemes and Jewish religious and cultural institutions worldwide.2 Furthermore, the JCC was also directly involved in promoting West

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German indemnification for Nazi injustice. On the Claims Conference’s initiative, the West German government pledged to standardize and extend federal German legislation on the restitution of assets seized during the Nazi era and the compensation of victims of Nazi persecution. This was written into the first Hague Protocol on the Luxembourg Agreement.3 In the following decades, the JCC assumed responsibility for monitoring the compensation process and liaising with the West German government to solve problems as they arose.4 The establishment of a ‘hardship fund’ in 1980, to compensate Jewish victims of Nazism who had emigrated to the West from eastern Europe since the 1960s, marked an important point in negotiations between the West German government and the Claims Conference. Many former persecutees from eastern Europe had not received any money before emigrating, as only residents of western countries were eligible for West German compensation. But they could not file regular claims even after emigrating because, under the German Compensation Laws (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz or BEG), the set period elapsed in 1967.5 The hardship fund, which the West German government agreed to endow with DM 400 million, provided humanitarian assistance to these persecutees. The JCC’s role in administering the fund was very similar to that of the partner organizations of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ in later years. It was responsible for implementing the programme, checking and processing claims and issuing payments to eligible persons, according to government guidelines.6 From this point onward, the JCC not only acted as a representative of the interests of Jewish victims of Nazism but also as an administrative body implementing a government compensation programme, without having any influence on the criteria of eligibility or the level of benefits.

The Claims Conference and Forced Labour The JCC did not focus on the issue of Nazi forced labour in its early years. Its primary objective was to improve and extend the existing German legislation on compensation. Since this did not make provisions for former forced labourers, the matter did not initially arise.7 But when the struggle for compensation for forced labour began, the Claims Conference soon became involved. Norbert Wollheim, a Holocaust survivor who had performed forced labour in IG Farben’s Buna works, tried to sue the company at a civil court in the 1950s.8 As the trial dragged on, Wollheim and his lawyer Henry Ormond, another former Nazi persecutee, turned to the JCC for support. Eventually,

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the JCC became the main party negotiating with the company management. In 1957 the Claims Conference secured an agreement with IG Farben providing DM 27 million for the company’s former Jewish forced labourers. The JCC took charge of processing the incoming claims while safeguarding the company against any further claims. The payment procedure was not completed until the second half of the 1960s: a total of 5,855 Jewish forced labourers received sums of DM 2,500 or DM 5,000, according to the duration of their detention. In the 1960s, the Claims Conference negotiated a number of other agreements with major German companies as well as IG Farben over more modest sums of money to settle claims by Jewish forced labourers. But these were in no way intended as admissions of legal guilt. Subsequently, there were few developments for another two decades.9 In the 1980s, the issue of compensation for forced labour gained a new dynamic. The German media and public began to consider the ‘forgotten victims’ of Nazism and criticize German industry’s involvement in Nazi crimes.10 In this changed climate, the JCC managed to persuade Deutsche Bank and the Daimler Benz group to set up compensation funds. Moreover, the issue of compensation for forced labour entered the political arena. In 1986, the SPD and the Greens, the opposition parties in the Bundestag, first called for a foundation endowed with public funds to compensate Nazi forced labourers. A hearing on the subject was arranged by the Bundestag opposition in late 1989. The experts invited to talk convincingly challenged the prevailing belief that such compensation was precluded by the London Debt Agreement of 1953.11 The German government’s basic principles on Wiedergutmachung were being shaken, all the more so when German reunification renewed the possibility of a final peace treaty between Germany and the Allies in 1990. For the Claims Conference, these political developments were mixed blessings. As long as the project of a state endowment fund for former forced labourers was under discussion, direct negotiations with individual businesses over compensation payments would go nowhere.12 On the other hand, players within the JCC did not believe the state would ever provide truly comprehensive compensation for Nazi forced labourers, given its potentially immense scale. In early 1990, the JCC’s founder and long-time leader Saul Kagan appeared convinced that no West German government would ever provide a lump sum of several billion Deutschmarks to benefit former forced labourers. For this reason, he wanted to focus on securing regular pension payments for those Jewish persons who had suffered the worst damages, had performed slave labour in concentration camps, and who were currently in need.13

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Similarly, an internal strategy document of 1996 advised distinguishing between different categories of persecution and demanding compensation only for the worst affected categories of former forced labourers: Jewish concentration camp prisoners. The author had DM 10,000 per person in mind. Multiplied by the estimated number of 15,000 surviving forced labourers, this would have amounted to a requirement of DM 150 million.14 The Claims Conference was initially reticent on the issue of forced labour primarily because it was conducting negotiations with the West German government over other fields, which it initially prioritized.15 German reunification provided an opportunity to reclaim Jewish property seized during the Nazi era in the eastern German states that had now joined the Federal Republic. With the support of the US government, the JCC was made the official negotiating party to the German government on questions of compensation for Nazi injustice. In this capacity, it negotiated the top-up and continuation of the 1980 hardship fund, and the establishment of the ‘Article 2 Fund’, providing regular pension payments to victims of especially grievous persecution who had hitherto received no compensation and were in financial need. The JCC was especially concerned to find a solution for Nazi victims in east central and eastern Europe, who still fell outside the German compensation system. Following tough negotiations, in early 1998 an agreement was concluded on a new compensation programme, the Central and Eastern European Fund (CEEF), providing pension payments for these persecutees.16 Over decades of negotiations between the JCC and the (West) German government, the Claims Conference became integrated on an administrative level in the German compensation system. This had a significant effect on its working methods. The JCC operated on the principle that the injustice and damages suffered during the Nazi era were immeasurable, and that compensation was therefore theoretically an open-ended process, subject to ongoing settlements and readjustments. However, the organization always acted pragmatically, taking the expected limits of what the Germans were willing and able to pay into account when formulating strategy, and not pursuing unrealistic demands out of moral principle. It also extended a hand to the German side by conducting negotiations behind closed doors, away from the public eye. Aware that compensation for Nazi injustice was not a popular subject with the German public and that the German government wanted to avoid encouraging demands from other persecutee groups, the JCC rarely used aggressive publicity campaigns to support its claims. Since the key players in the JCC had exclusive access

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to Germany’s decision-making bodies, it made sense to adopt this form of ‘secret diplomacy’.17 In the second half of the 1990s, however, new players entered the stage, changing the field of compensation policy. The most prominent of them were class action lawyers, who in summer 1998 began filing lawsuits at US courts against German businesses for their employment of forced labourers during the Nazi era.18 Class actions use a strategy of intimidation, asserting astronomically high, accumulated claims and backing them up with intense public pressure. But this approach conflicted with the JCC’s methods. It viewed the appearance of the class action lawyers with deep mistrust and initially refused to cooperate with them.19 The Claims Conference feared their seemingly boundless demands and aggressive publicity campaigns would endanger its own good relations with German politics. Yet the JCC was forced on to the defensive by the class actions. There was no denying that these lawsuits had finally persuaded German industry and the government to enter into negotiations over compensation for Nazi forced labour, whereas nothing had been achieved in this respect in decades of talks with the Claims Conference. In a way, the restitution movement of the 1990s caught the JCC off guard and forced it to react. In July 1998, prior to a JCC board meeting, Karl Brozik, director of the German office, spoke out in favour of abandoning the strategy of avoiding publicity and taking a more aggressive approach. He called for the JCC to use legal as well as political means to publicly convey its views on compensation for forced labour.20 This, however, proved more complicated than first imagined. The group of experts commissioned to draft a sample claim found that the organization’s files on forced labour had already been passed on to archives in Israel, where they had to be tracked down before work could begin.21 Both internal and external criticisms of the JCC played a part in triggering some important personnel changes in the organization in late 1998. These were spurred on by Israel Singer, Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress. He and the WJC’s president, Edgar Bronfman, had become controversially involved in the matter of Jewish property in eastern Europe and the dispute with Swiss banks over the dormant accounts of Holocaust victims.22 Singer now increasingly intervened in disputes over compensation for Nazi forced labour. Long-standing top-level staff, such as Saul Kagan, who had led and represented the JCC for over half a century, took a back seat, and the post of managing vice president was passed to Gideon Taylor, a thirty-five-year-old Irishman.23 These personnel changes occurred in tandem with a change in the organization’s public profile. It now showed more determined

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involvement in the debate over Nazi forced labour. Over the course of 1999, political negotiations with the German government and representatives of German industry gradually got underway, and the JCC re-entered the field in which it had most experience. But the form of these negotiations and their outcome, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, were quite new. It took a while for the JCC to become accustomed to the situation and its role within it.

Jewish and Other Nazi Victims Not only Jewish concentration camp prisoners were exploited by the Nazis for labour. Millions of people from eastern Europe were forced to work for industry or agriculture in the German Reich. Yet for several decades they had been excluded from the German system of compensation for Nazi injustice. They had had no prospect of compensation until negotiations over the German Foundation Initiative began.24 Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia – the countries most affected – participated in the international talks. The JCC did not oppose their participation. But this multilateral constellation soon gave rise to fierce rivalry. It first became apparent when it came to categorizing the forms of forced labour to be compensated. The fates of those who had performed forced labour under the Nazis varied greatly. Fixing different levels of compensation for different fates therefore seemed a logical solution. But a fundamental conflict of interests emerged between the Claims Conference, representing the Jewish forced labourers who had suffered racial persecution and faced physical extermination, and the east central and eastern European governments, with Poland as their most vociferous advocate. The Polish Foreign Ministry issued a memorandum in April 1999 making its position clear. It felt that a global fund for forced labourers ‘would compensate some victim groups a second time’, and explicitly named the Jewish persecutees as an example. Poland therefore suggested offsetting the Jewish victims’ current share of the fund against previous compensation payments, which was completely unacceptable to the JCC. While the Polish side conceded Jewish victims of forced labour a higher amount of compensation, it did not want it to be ‘disproportionately higher than [the amount] for non-Jewish victims’.25 There was, however, much disagreement on the definition of proportionate. The JCC’s initial main concern was to distinguish ‘slave labour’, i.e. forced labour performed in the worst circumstances by concentration

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camp inmates, from other forms of forced labour. The negotiating team went through several scenarios to find different definitions of Nazi slave labour. Finally, it decided to avoid using a definition of slave labour that would apply to Jewish persecutees only. It placed the emphasis instead on the criterion of concentration camp imprisonment, which also applied to other groups of persecutees. At the same time, the JCC did not want the category of ‘mere’ forced labour to be defined too broadly, even if potentially eligible Jewish applicants were excluded as a result.26 Amid the complex entanglement of interests represented at the multilateral negotiations, the Claims Conference had trouble achieving its own targets. Israel Singer tried to arrange separate talks towards an ‘interim solution’ for the Jewish-dominated category of slave labourers, in isolation from the gridlocked negotiations, but failed.27 The various parties’ conflicting interests continued to clash. While the JCC fought to secure as large an amount of compensation as possible for the group of victims of the worst persecution, the Polish delegation was concerned to include as many forced labourers as possible in the scheme, and especially the Polish forced labourers who had worked in agriculture, even at the cost of reducing the amount of compensation per person.28 The symbolic significance of payments weighed heavily for all parties involved. While the east central and eastern European delegations did not want payments to slave labourers to be more than double those to ‘ordinary’ forced labourers, the JCC insisted on a greater difference.29 The US and German governments’ proposal to make the relation three to one (DM 15,000 to DM 5,000) was accepted, but followed by complaints from the Polish side that there could only be symbolic equality if the Polish and Jewish shares of the fund were the same. The JCC, meanwhile, feared that the DM 1.8 billion it had been accorded would not be enough to compensate the projected number of Jewish applicants at the fixed level. This conflict was only settled when the US government agreed to carve out for the JCC an additional DM 260 million from the share accorded the ‘rest of the world’, which had no delegate at the talks, in a secret bilateral agreement.30 In the end, then, the Claims Conference was accorded the largest share of the fund, DM 2,072 billion, but this fact was veiled in the Joint Statement of July 2000. In order to achieve its targets, the JCC had to make the concession of sharing the responsibility for Jewish claims with the foundation’s partner organizations. Jewish claimants living in countries with a national partner organization were required to file their applications in their country of residence and received their payments from the corresponding national ceiling fund. On the one hand, this had the advantage for

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the JCC that it took some of the burden from its own budget. But it also had symbolic implications, since it divided up the Jewish world, which the JCC represented, into separate parts. Moreover, there were fears that officials in the eastern European countries might discriminate against Jewish claimants when processing claims. For this reason, the Claims Conference tried to secure a contractual right of representation for all Jewish claims by proposing what Stuart Eizenstat dubbed the Dual Key Approach.31 However, the Polish and Czech national delegations objected to the arrangement, so cooperation had to prove its worth in later practice. In contrast to the eastern European partner organizations that were supported by their respective governments, the Claims Conference did not have any national backing. Yet its position was far from weak. While the Israeli government did not offer much assistance, leaving the field of compensation for Nazi injustice almost entirely to the JCC, the US government provided important support to the organization. US Special Representative Stuart Eizenstat, the chairman and moderator of the negotiations, was particularly committed to the interests of Jewish victims of persecution. On many occasions, the JCC approached the US government for additional guarantees on deals it had made.32 But the US administration’s special involvement ended with the establishment of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, from which point the JCC had only itself to rely on in an unfamiliar situation.

Between Conflict and Cooperation The JCC’s cooperation with the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ began with the founding meeting of the board of trustees in August 2000. The Claims Conference was represented here by Karl Brozik, director of its German office. A Holocaust survivor, Brozik had many years’ experience of working with German government representatives and was highly respected. Although key decisions were ultimately made in the organization’s headquarters in New York, Brozik often pursued his own agenda, thus heightening the profile of the JCC’s Frankfurt office. Bilateral agreements governing the terms of cooperation were drawn up between the foundation and all its partner organizations. During negotiations over this agreement, it emerged that the Claims Conference and the foundation held highly diverging views of the tasks and mutual responsibilities involved. Having decades of experience of

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independently administering compensation funds and paying benefits to Holocaust victims, the JCC was reluctant to allow the foundation to dictate conditions. A first draft by the board proposed placing all the decision-making authority concerning application and payment procedures in the hands of the German foundation while shifting the legal responsibility on to the partner organizations. The JCC spokespeople declared this arrangement to be ‘unacceptable’, and a form of ‘legal incapacitation’ that ‘went as far as the partner organization’s internal administrative affairs’. The Claims Conference maintained that it did not see itself as the executive body of the German foundation but primarily as a representation of interests for Jewish forced labourers.33 Yet the JCC did not have much scope for negotiation. It reluctantly submitted to the role of implementing body when it finally signed the partnership agreement in March 2001, having pushed through some minor changes.34 While the organization’s New York headquarters could not entirely accept the asymmetric power arrangement in the early phase, curator Karl Brozik strove to maintain pragmatic working relations with the foundation’s board of directors.35 By and large, cooperation with the foundation went smoothly. But occasional friction was inevitable in view of the two sides’ diverging opinions on roles and responsibilities. The arrival of supervisory teams in June 2001, sent by the foundation to check whether applications were being correctly processed and payments properly carried out, was hardly welcomed by the partner organizations. The JCC’s staff objected to being monitored by a team that had no previous experience of compensation issues. The supervisory teams, meanwhile, complained to the foundation that the partner organizations were reluctant to cooperate.36 Although the antagonistic mood gradually lifted some months into these supervisory visits, the initial impression that each side had gained of the other proved enduring. The foundation’s monitors felt the JCC’s working methods were chaotic and sketchy; conversely, the Claims Conference staff saw the foundation as excessively controlling and bureaucratic. These views were compounded by the two sides’ disagreement on the handling of the time limit for applications. The foundation’s monitors criticized the fact that the JCC was processing applications that had not been clearly submitted within the set period, and was awarding payments to these applicants. Certainly, the JCC was not stringent about noting dates, but accepted telephone statements as valid applications and did not stamp written applications as ‘received’. It was, then, less of a problem that the JCC was processing late applications than that the foundation could not always verify their date of reception. Here, again, the German side’s perception of the foundation

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as the highest authority in the scheme and of the partner organizations as implementing bodies clashed with the JCC’s own identity as an autonomous organization with decision-making powers as well as a body representing the interests of Jewish applicants.37 The initially confrontational character of relations between the Claims Conference and the other partner organizations changed completely when the foundation’s compensation programme got underway. Henceforth the partner organizations consulted each other on decisions regarding the payment procedure and tried to mutually consolidate their positions. The foundation’s board of directors was concerned to avoid them forming a united front. In some fields, the JCC even worked in especially close cooperation with the Polish partner organizations, such as on the matter of recognizing the eligibility of underage forced labourers.38 After a year, Karl Brozik described the first phase of work with the foundation as mutually supportive and largely free of conflict, adding that the eastern European partner organizations seemed to have lost their initial reservations about the JCC.39 Still, as it pursued the Dual Key Approach, the Claims Conference assumed additional functions beyond those of the other partner organizations. While the other organizations tended not to interfere in each other’s fields of activity, the JCC took responsibility for Jewish applicants who submitted their claims to national partner organizations as well as for its own applicants. When Jewish communities and victims’ associations in the Republic of Moldova protested against having to deal with a Ukrainian foundation that they had had negative experience of in the 1990s,40 the JCC intervened in the compensation process here. It arranged for the Ukrainian partner organization to use the documentation on Moldovan Jews already submitted for the Article 2 Fund and the Central and Eastern European Fund. Having supplied lists of eligible persons to the Ukrainian organization, the JCC was able to monitor the payment process by following up with circular emails to all Jewish CEEF beneficiaries from Moldova, enquiring whether their applications had been accepted and properly processed.41 Similarly, the JCC helped Latvian applicants deal with the foundation’s Russian partner organization by supplying documentary evidence of periods of internment in ghettos and concentration camps.42 While the JCC was obliged to respect the other partner organizations’ spheres of responsibility, it was still able to fulfil its self-set task as a supervisory body and problem-solver on behalf of all Jewish applicants.

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The Forced Labour Programme and Other Programmes Another crucial difference between the Claims Conference and the foundation’s central and eastern European partner organizations existed: compensation for Nazi forced labour was only one of several projects that the JCC was involved in around the turn of the millennium. To understand what this programme meant to the Claims Conference, it must be seen in this context. The forced labour compensation project involved distributing a large lump sum in a relatively short space of time among a large number of beneficiaries. The JCC’s usual approach, in contrast, was to provide regular pension payments and smaller oneoff payments in the long term. The hardship fund established in 1980, which had been topped up several times since the 1990s, is an example of the latter approach. In terms of the number of beneficiaries, this fund was the JCC’s most successful programme. Over 350,000 Jewish victims of Nazism received one-off payments by 2010. The total outlay was almost €1 billion.43 But the Article 2 Fund had the largest endowment and formed the backbone of the JCC’s work since its founding in 1992. To date, 85,000 persecutees have received regular pension payments from this fund. The amount of benefits paid has thus exceeded the €2 billion mark; some €150 to €200 million are still paid and thousands of new grants awarded each year. Add to this the smaller but nonetheless important Central and Eastern European Fund – aimed at especially needy Holocaust survivors in eastern Europe – the total number of beneficiaries of regular pensions from the JCC rises to 100,000. By the time the payments to former forced labourers had been completed, the Claims Conference had paid in excess of $5 billion or €3.75 billion in individual compensation payments between 1980 and 2008. As well as these funds, from the mid 1990s, the JCC relied on the proceeds – over $1 billion – from the restitution, sale or rental of property in East Germany. The €1.1 billion that made up the JCC’s share in the Nazi forced labour fund thus constituted just under a third of all the resources that the organization used to make individual compensation payments. The German government’s idea that the compensation programme for forced labour represented a conclusive gesture of recognition and reconciliation was not supported by the Claims Conference. On the contrary, the JCC continued to insist that Wiedergutmachung was an open-ended process involving many interrelated programmes. Again and again, the JCC’s representatives fought the false claim that Jewish forced labourers had already been compensated, and argued against

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payments from the forced labour fund being set off against earlier benefits paid under the German Compensation Laws.44 In order to avoid the foundation setting a precedent for other programmes and areas of indemnification, the JCC worked persistently to gain a written assurance from the German government that beneficiaries under the Foundation Law would not be excluded from other compensation programmes. In the event, the Federal Ministry of Finance guaranteed that the foundation project would not mark the end of talks with the JCC over compensation for Jewish victims of Nazism.45 The Claims Conference managed, then, to prevent the Nazi forced labour compensation scheme from having negative repercussions for other programmes. But the interplay of various compensation schemes had another effect: as applications were processed, new information came to light about the persecution and exploitation of European Jews, especially with respect to the category of ‘other places of imprisonment’, that provided new impetus for the compensation process. Under the Foundation Law, former forced labourers could receive compensation of the highest category if they had been exploited as slave labourers in concentration camps or ghettos. An official list of such places of imprisonment had been compiled for the German Compensation Laws. However, it gradually emerged that there had been many other labour camps where inmates had suffered inhuman regimentation, malnourishment and lack of medical care. When partner organizations encountered evidence of hitherto unknown camps like these, they could request to have them officially recognized as ‘other places of imprisonment’ by the foundation’s board of trustees. Applicants who could plausibly claim to have been held in these places of imprisonment automatically received the highest level of compensation. The Claims Conference concentrated its research on the territory of the German Reich’s former allies, such as Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia. Far less was known about the persecution and exploitation of the Jewish population in these countries than in the German-occupied territories. An entire network of historians and research institutes, such as Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the United States Holocaust Memorial in Washington D.C., participated in the research into Nazi forced labour. In Frankfurt, the historians Peter Heuss and Jens Hoppe were employed by the JCC to collate findings and prepare requests for ‘other places of imprisonment’ to be recognized. Their involvement also resulted in the publication of academic works on the subject.46 Some of the impetus to conduct further historical research came from knowledge produced by other compensation programmes. For

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example, much was known about the Jewish labour battalions in Hungary in 1944–45. But these victims could not apply for benefits from the Article 2 Fund because it required beneficiaries to have spent a minimum period of six months in a concentration camp or eighteen months in a ghetto. Their systematic persecution had started ‘too late’. However, the knowledge of the persecution and exploitation of Jews in Hungary could now be applied to the foundation project, where the duration of claimants’ forced labour was not a significant criterion.47 Further research revealed that similar Jewish labour battalions had also existed in Romania.48 Where Bulgaria was concerned, especially, the historians working for the JCC broke new ground. Ever more applications described hitherto little known places of imprisonment here.49 But the Bulgarian administration did not support the historians in their attempts to research such places, limiting their access to state archives, in order to avoid upsetting the national myth that Bulgaria had saved its Jews. Hence, the historians relied even more on the microfiche holdings in Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The JCC’s historical research revealed situations concerning the persecution of European Jews that fell beyond the compass of the foundation as well as other compensation programmes. The Jewish victims of forced labour in Bulgaria, for example, whose fates were not officially recognized as cases of historical injustice, had not come under the provisions of the Article 2 Fund or the CEEF. Nevertheless, the German Ministry of Finance opposed applying the new historical findings to other programmes, holding to the ‘prevailing doctrine’ set by the previous state of research. However, it was eventually convinced of the significance of the JCC’s findings over the course of lengthy discussions, and its resistance crumbled.50 Similarly, discoveries about the exploitation of Jewish forced labourers in North Africa lent a new dynamic to the compensation debate.51 The Nazi persecution of Jews in North Africa had been largely overlooked by academic Holocaust research and had only recently begun to be addressed, especially in Israel.52 The many applications to the foundation mentioning victims’ exploitation in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco brought the grim reality of the forced labour camps in these countries into focus. The Claims Conference was not only able to provide those affected with compensation from the forced labour fund, but also ensured that the North African camps were recognized under the Article 2 Fund.53 Hence the compensation scheme for forced labour proved to be one element in a dynamic process of articulating and negotiating Jewish restitution claims.

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Great Expectations To process applications and issue payments, the Claims Conference made use of its well-oiled network of transnational structures. Applications could be submitted to the offices in Tel Aviv and Frankfurt am Main as well as the headquarters in New York. In Hungary, the JCC cooperated with local Jewish organizations, which functioned as local points of contact for the large number of potential applicants expected. In Israel, a call centre was set up especially to take telephone enquiries about the application and compensation procedure. The Israeli state supported the project by placing public infrastructure at the Claim Conference’s disposal. Application forms and information leaflets were available at all Israeli post offices.54 The first phase of the project consisted of a worldwide outreach campaign. The JCC placed advertisements publicizing the foundation’s work in Jewish and non-Jewish print media, and sent information material to intermediary agencies. It also used its contacts with Jewish communities, social facilities and Holocaust survivor associations to get the information to potential applicants. The outreach campaign urged anyone who might potentially have a claim to submit an application. The slogan on its posters ran: ‘If in doubt, fill it out!’55 In addition, the Claims Conference carried out more proactive outreach using data from other compensation programmes. It sent unsolicited information about the possibility of claiming and the regulations governing it to the postal address of every one of the 150,000 victims of Nazism on the JCC’s pension lists.56 To keep the procedure as simple as possible, three different application forms were designed. Applicants who were beneficiaries of the Article 2 Fund or the CEEF had the shortest questionnaire to complete, since the Claims Conference already had documentary information on them. A somewhat longer questionnaire was designed for applicants who had received benefits under the German Compensation Laws. These cases could be confirmed by brief enquiries to the German compensation offices.57 Referring to the files on earlier programmes, where possible, spared applicants the ordeal of reliving their pasts and justifying their claims once again. But those who had not benefited from any previous compensation programmes still had to put considerable effort into their applications. They were helped by the JCC, which liaised with archives, administrations, memorial sites and associations, and maintained its own research team in Yad Vashem to find documentary evidence relating to claims.

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Due to the high level of media interest in the international negotiations over the foundation, the Claims Conference received many enquiries and informal applications even before the programme was launched. Interested parties contacted the JCC by post, fax and telephone. The organization’s New York headquarters took over seven hundred telephone enquiries daily.58 By the closing date for applications, on 31 December 2001, the Claims Conference had received almost 265,000 valid applications. Of these, 160,500 were accepted and 104,300 rejected. The majority of compensation payments went to beneficiaries in Israel (49.4 per cent) and the United States (23.8 per cent). Other beneficiaries lived in Hungary (9.3 per cent), Canada (4.8 per cent) and Australia (2.4 per cent) as well as fifty-eight other countries.59 The relatively low success rate of applications – 58.3 per cent – ­indicates that the programme’s aggressive advertising roused more hopes and expectations than could ultimately be fulfilled. The JCC’s proactive approach, in particular, relieving many applicants of much of the work and encouraging people to apply even if they were uncertain of their claim, made disappointments inevitable. Jewish applicants’ expectations, hopes and claims exceeded the provisions of the German forced labour fund by a considerable margin. Some applications that fell outside the scheme were submitted by Israeli nationals who had fled from the western territories of the Soviet Union to the interior to escape the Germans during the Second World War, and who had later been made to perform forced labour by the communist regime. Other disappointed applicants were Jewish refugees who had been interned by the Allied military en route to Palestine. While these experiences of injustice were certainly linked to the Nazis’ persecution of Jews, they did not fall under the provisions of the forced labour compensation programme.60 Staff at the JCC’s offices in Frankfurt and New York reported that some applicants, or their heirs, responded very emotionally to the rejection of their applications. The organization was widely perceived as being the author of the forced labour compensation programme and its regulations, and attacked as such. One relative of a Holocaust survivor who had passed away before the qualifying date in February 1999, wrote angrily: ‘I do not understand how the people at the CC set up the rule that a person who was in German slave labour and died as a result of this inhuman treatment, his or her heirs cannot have a claim against the German government for this poor Jewish slave labourer’.61 The Claims Conference even found itself defending the rules of the programme in court, though it did not make or necessarily agree with them all. When a group of survivors of the Amsterdam ghetto tried

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unsuccessfully to sue the JCC at Frankfurt regional court, a Dutch survivors’ association accused the organization’s lawyer of representing the German side rather than Jewish interests.62 Certainly, there was a tension inherent in the JCC’s activities, balancing Jewish interests against German regulations, which could not always be resolved. The range of responses from successful applicants to the claim procedure and the JCC’s work has been extremely varied. The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ conducted a survey of successful applicants to enquire whether they had received their payments. The large majority of those questioned expressed gratitude in more or less succinct terms. Many added a description of their financial or health difficulties and an indication of what the money would be spent on. In no few cases, addressees expressed the wish or hope for further, urgently needed, assistance: ‘My compensation is not enough. I would like a pension for my old age and suffering’ (France). Other applicants thanked the foundation for the benefits but at the same emphasized that the suffering and injustice they had experienced could not be compensated; the money could not restore their previous lives or bring murdered relatives back to life. There were also negative responses, expressing embitterment at the delay in and amount of compensation: ‘The money has come too late and is too little’ (Israel). To some survivors, who were not sure if they had received it, the compensation did not seem particularly important: ‘I have no recollection of a payment. It is quite possible that I received it. Many thanks for your concern in this matter.’ (USA). Some responses indicated misunderstandings on the part of the beneficiaries, such as when they took the opportunity to enquire about further instalments.63 Few of the Jewish claimants referred explicitly to the forced labour they had performed under the Nazis when responding to enquiries about their compensation payments. Jewish victims of Nazism perceived themselves primarily as Holocaust survivors rather than former slave labourers. To them, compensation was recognition and recompense for all of their suffering, not just one aspect of it. Hence, few beneficiaries took the view that these payments represented a symbolic gesture that brought this chapter in history to a close. The majority of Jewish forced labourers had previous experience of German Wiedergutmachung, having received payments of some kind under other programmes, and expected this to continue in future. To many it was immaterial where the individual payments came from or which aspects of Nazi injustice they were intended to compensate: ‘I know that I once received a certain sum. I cannot remember either how much it was or which organization sent it’ (Israel).64 Understandably enough, then, hardly any of

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the beneficiaries questioned indicated that receiving compensation for forced labour was especially significant to them. The situation was perhaps different for those gaining symbolic and financial recognition of their persecution for the first time through the foundation. Indeed, this was the case for 63,400 of the 160,600 Jewish beneficiaries – almost forty per cent. Most of these lived in Hungary, where almost seventy per cent of beneficiaries were receiving compensation for the first time in their lives. The establishment of the foundation was certainly an important development for them, especially for those who had been trying to claim compensation for many years. Hungarian Holocaust survivor Imre V., for example, had applied for a benefit from the Article 2 Fund back in 1993 but had been rejected. He emigrated to Venezuela but stayed in contact with the Claims Conference, which helped him find archival documents and eventually recognized his entitlement to compensation from the forced labour fund. Imre V. did not study the distinctions between the various programmes. As far as he was concerned, his application had finally been successful after almost twenty years. His tenacious fight for justice had paid off at last.65

A Contested Mission Journalists John Authers and Richard Wolffe have claimed that the Claims Conference did not enjoy a good reputation among Jewish Holocaust survivors in the 1990s. In their view, the JCC was considered to be a sluggish, inert and bureaucratic organization with an aging leadership that was unprepared for the start of discussions concerning Holocaust-era assets.66 But they fail to take the spectacular revival into account that the JCC experienced following German reunification. Acting as legal successor for heirless Jewish assets on the territory of the East German states, it obtained hundreds of millions of Deutschmarks, enabling it to substantially extend its aid programmes.67 It was this that stirred renewed public interest in, and indeed criticism of, the organization. The JCC’s involvement in compensation for Jewish forced labourers was just one aspect of the organization’s activities that interested observers, on account of the publicity surrounding the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and its partner organizations. Having shown little capacity for public relations in the past, under Gideon Taylor’s leadership the Claims Conference worked to publicize its goals and make its structures and methods more transparent. Still, this did not prevent many criticisms being directed at precisely

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these aspects. A transnational movement of Holocaust survivors had formed in the United States and Israel in the 1980s, which became organized under the umbrella of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel (COHSI). While both organizations became corporative members of the JCC, they retained a critical distance from its work.68 As the start of negotiations over forced labourer compensation approached, Noach Flug, chairperson of the COHSI, warned the JCC not to presume it had a monopoly on representing Holocaust survivors.69 Later, the programme’s payment procedure elicited protests against the JCC’s mandate. In early 2004, a delegation of Holocaust survivors went to the German embassy in London to protest the way the compensation programme was being implemented. They complained that the Claims Conference was taking unduly long to pay out compensation, given the assets it had at its disposal. The British activists were outraged at what it saw as the JCC’s bureaucratic approach and lack of transparency and questioned its right to speak on behalf of Jewish victims of Nazism.70 Indeed, the representation of Jewish interests became increasingly pluralized from the 1990s, as local organizations of Holocaust survivors asserted their rights to have a say in compensation matters. The above incident also illustrates the broadly held, persistently stereotyped view of the JCC that it was sitting on untapped reserves of immense wealth. US political scientist Norman Finkelstein’s raging polemic The Holocaust Industry burst on the scene just as preparations to establish the foundation began. The following year it was also published in German, to vociferous protests by Jewish organizations.71 Yet many of the issues and criticisms it raised were not new. Instead of conducting his own research, the author had borrowed heavily from historian Peter Novick’s previously published book on Jewish-American Holocaust remembrance, but grossly distorted Novick’s theses to support his own argument of an ideological offensive.72 Responses to Finkelstein’s book were varied. While it was generally dismissed in the United States as an unscholarly fringe opinion, following a devastating review by Omer Bartov in the New York Times, it was hotly debated at various panel discussions and events in Germany, to which the author was frequently invited.73 The JCC’s reactions reflected these national differences. The New York office did not comment at all so as not to place any importance on Finkelstein’s theses. It merely produced a small brochure of counter-arguments that was available on request only. Director of the Frankfurt office, Karl Brozik, however, agreed to an exchange of views with Finkelstein to be published in the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. Here, Brozik contradicted a number of Finkelstein’s false claims but

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did not comment on the general thrust of his argument.74 The Claims Conference in Germany was put under pressure to clarify its position on the Finkelstein debate, to specify the kind of projects it supported with the foundation’s money, and to show that it submitted to monitoring by the foundation.75 In Israel, too, the JCC came under increasing pressure in the new millennium. Its relationship with the country where the majority of Holocaust survivors lived, and above all with the Israeli state, was not easy. The Israeli government did not play an important role in the JCC’s work, leaving the field of compensation almost entirely to the Claims Conference. Hence most of the growing criticisms of how compensation for victims of Nazism was organized and implemented were directed at the JCC. The higher than average rate of rejection of applications from Israel reflected the greater expectations Israelis had of German compensation policy. Just under forty-nine per cent of Israeli applications to the foundation were successful, whereas the rates of success in the other major beneficiary countries, the United States, Hungary, Canada and Australia, were between 74 and 81 per cent. The Israeli public had particularly little understanding for the German compensation system’s complicated and sometimes bizarre rules, which could produce completely different results for individuals with identical histories of persecution if they fulfilled slightly different formal criteria.76 The head of the appeals body in Jerusalem, Ze’ev Sher, publicly announced that he did not feel bound by the regulations of the German Foundation Law in his work. In his view, anyone who had suffered persecution in the Nazi era was entitled to compensation, regardless of the German rules.77 The foundation’s board responded by refusing to issue payments to applicants who had been approved by the Jerusalem appeals body and advised the JCC to relieve the director of his duties, since he failed to act as mediator. In the event, Sher was forced to resign due to a serious illness, and the conflict’s escalation was averted.78 The controversies surrounding the JCC essentially revolved around the question of who should benefit from compensation for Nazi injustice. This question had attended the organization since its founding and elicited various responses at different times. From the 1990s, victims’ associations increasingly called for the Claims Conference to reduce its outgoings on cultural and social facilities and devote all its funds to Holocaust survivors.79 The JCC proved receptive to these demands, channelling ever more of its resources into alleviating the sometimes desperate plight of Holocaust survivors, especially in Israel and eastern Europe. This became the central aspect of its negotiations with Germany. Thus the Claims Conference played a part in the gradual paradigm

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shift that took place in the field of compensation for victims of Nazism from the 1990s. Increasingly, the consensus grew that compensation payments and welfare benefits for Holocaust survivors should not be primarily measured against the injustice or concrete damage suffered but should contribute to restoring the dignity of former persecutees and help them out of the often grinding poverty that they lived in. The JCC emerged as the dominant Jewish organization in the struggle to achieve these goals, too. Despite the fierce criticisms it received from many sides, the JCC’s position as the exclusive Jewish negotiating party in Wiedergutmachung matters was never challenged. Equally, implementing the forced labourer compensation programme did not change the organization’s basic conviction that compensation for the crimes of the Holocaust remains an open-ended process. Benno Nietzel is Lecturer in Political History at Bielefeld University. His research interests include transitional justice, German-Jewish history, the history of Nazi Germany, and media history. His Ph.D. thesis on the history of Jewish entrepreneurs from Frankfurt am Main was published as Handeln und Überleben: Jüdische Unternehmer aus Frankfurt am Main 1924– 1964 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012).

Notes  1. This chapter is based on the joint contribution by Benno Nietzel and Patrice G. Poutrus, ‘Die Jewish Claims Conference und die Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit’, in Constantin Goschler (ed.), in cooperation with José Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts: Die Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ und ihre Partnerorganisationen, vol 2: Trans­ nationale Opferanwaltschaft: Das Auszahlungsprogramm und die internationalen Organisationen (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 7–79.  2. Nana Sagi, German Reparations: A History of the Negotiations (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1980); Ronald W. Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World: A History of the Claims Conference, 2nd ed. (London: Cass, 2001).  3. Hans Günter Hockerts, ‘Wiedergutmachung in Deutschland’, Vierteljahr­ shefte für Zeitgeschichte 49 (2001): 181; see also Constantin Goschler, Wiedergutmachung: Westdeutschland und die Verfolgten des Nationalsozialismus (1945–1954) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992); idem, Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008).  4. Marilyn Henry, Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the Claims Conference (London/Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007), 28–59.

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 5. Hans Günter Hockerts, ‘Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa: Eine einführende Skizze’, in Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds), Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa, 1945–2000 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), 7–58.  6. Henry, Confronting the Perpetrators, 60–73.  7. Klaus Barwig, Günter Saathoff and Nicole Weyde (eds), Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit: Rechtliche, historische und politische Aspekte (BadenBaden: Nomos, 1998); Lutz Niethammer. ‘From Forced Labor in Nazi Germany to the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”: A Tentative History’, in Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff (eds), ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 15–85; Constantin Goschler, ‘Die Auseinandersetzung um die Entschädigung der Zwangsarbeiter zwischen Kaltem Krieg und Globalisierung’, in Hans-Christoph Seidel and Klaus Tenfelde (eds), Zwangsarbeit im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts: Bewältigung und vergleichende Aspekte (Essen: Klartext, 2007), 115–30; Anja Hense, Verhinderte Entschädigung: Die Entstehung der Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ für die Opfer von Zwangsarbeit und ‘Arisierung’ (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2008); Henning Borggräfe, Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung: Vom Streit um ‘vergessene Opfer’ zur Selbstaussöhnung der Deutschen (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014).  8. Wolfgang Benz, ‘Der Wollheim-Prozeß: Zwangsarbeit für I. G. Farben in Auschwitz’, in Ludolf Herbst and Constantin Goschler (eds), Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), 303–26; Joachim Robert Rumpf, Der Fall Wollheim gegen die I.G. Farbenindustrie AG in Liquidation: Die erste Musterklage eines ehemaligen Zwangsarbeiters in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Prozess, Politik und Presse (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2010).  9. Benjamin B. Ferencz, Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989); Constantin Goschler, ‘Controversy about a Pittance: The Compensation of Forced Laborers from Concentration Camps by Germany’s Post-War Industry’, Dachau Review 1 (1988): 157–76; Carolina Krussig ‘Settlements between Single Firms and the Jewish Claims Conference before the Foundation Act 2000’, in Peer Zumbansen (ed.), Zwangsarbeit im Dritten Reich: Erinnerung und Verantwortung (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002), 173–200; Mark Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im ­besetzten Europa 1939–1945 (Stuttgart/Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001), 248. 10. Borggräfe, Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung, 126–90; Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 293–360. 11. Karl Brozik to Benjamin Ferencz and Saul Kagan, 21 December 1989, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Benjamin B. Ferencz Collection, RG12.005.01*24.

100 • Benno Nietzel

12. Karl Brozik to Saul Kagan, 5 October 1989, USHMM, Benjamin B. Ferencz Collection, RG12.005.01*24; Karl Brozik to Kurt Wehle, 26 September 1990, USHMM, Benjamin B. Ferencz Collection, RG12.005.01*25. 13. Saul Kagan to Karl Brozik, 21 January 1990, USHMM, Benjamin B. Ferencz Collection, RG12.005.01*25. 14. Strategy Paper on Slave Labor, undated [1996], Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Zwangsarbeit 1’. 15. Memo: Israel Miller to board of directors, 11 July 1991, USHMM, Benjamin B. Ferencz Collection, RG12.007.01*16. 16. Henry, Confronting the Perpetrators, 88–123. 17. Goschler, Schuld und Schulden, 441–49. 18. Michael R. Marrus, Some Measure of Justice: The Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009); Michael J. Bazyler, Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America’s Courts (New York: NYU Press, 2003); Michael J. Bazyler and Roger P. Alford (eds), Holocaust Restitution: Perspectives on the Litigation and Its Legacy (New York: NYU Press, 2006). 19. Melvyn I. Weiss to William J. Clinton, 28 January 1999, Library of Congress, Stuart E. Eizenstat Papers, Box 204, folder 8; John Authers and Richard Wolffe, The Victim’s Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle over the Debts of the Holocaust (New York: Harper Collins, 2002); Stuart Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (New York: Public Affairs, 2003). 20. Karl Brozik to Saul Kagan, 1 July 1998, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Zwangsarbeit 1’. 21. S.J. Kramer to Karl Brozik, 31 December 1998, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Zwangsarbeit 1’; Note on a meeting in Jerusalem, 4 January 1999, ibid. 22. Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice. 23. Authers and Wolffe, The Victim’s Fortune, 194. 24. Hockerts, ‘Entschädigung’; Hense, Verhinderte Entschädigung. 25. Non-paper on compensation for former slave and forced laborers, 26 April 1999, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Zwangsarbeit 2’. 26. Memo: ‘Different slave labour definitions’, 9 March 1999, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Zwangsarbeit 2’; Karl Brozik to Karen Heilig, 2 June 1999, ibid. 27. Note on a meeting of Foreign Minister Fischer with Israel Singer and Gideon Taylor, 24 September 1999, EVZ Archives, ASSI, Länder, 4.5. 28. Note on state of affairs concerning Poland, 20 December 1999, EVZ Archives, ASSI, Länder, 4.8; see also Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice. 29. Central and eastern European Countries to Stuart Eizenstat and Otto Graf Lambsdorff, 15 February 2000, Library of Congress, Stuart E. Eizenstat Papers, Box 205, folder 5; see also Authers and Wolffe, The Victim’s Fortune, 234–46; Hense, Verhinderte Entschädigung, 192–202. 30. Authers and Wolffe, The Victim’s Fortune, 243–44. 31. ‘Dual key’ approach discussed by Deputy Secretary Eizenstat at the plenum in Washington, undated [July 2000], EVZ Archives, ASSI, Länder,

The Jewish Claims Conference and Compensation for Nazi Forced Labour 1951–2008 • 101

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

4.7; Stuart E. Eizenstat to Israel Miller and Israel Singer, 14 July 2000, Jewish Claims Conference, Key Documents, vol. 2, 37. Stuart E. Eizenstat to Israel Miller and Israel Singer, 28 April 2000, Jewish Claims Conference, Key Documents, vol. 1, 16. Statement of the Jewish Claims Conference, 31 August 2000, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘KuSi III’; Memo on Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, August 2000, ibid. Contract between the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future and Jewish Claims Conference, 14 March 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.13. Karl Brozik to Greg Schneider, 1 July 2002, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Partnervertrag II’. Karl Brozik to board of directors, 26 June 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.01/13; Control Report JCC, July/August 2001, ibid. Note on JCC, 12 August 2003, EVZ Archives, 501.13; Karl Brozik to Michael Jansen, 2 September 2003, ibid.; Hans-Otto Bräutigam to Christiane Reh, 13 October 2004, ibid. Bartosz Jalowiecki to Karl Brozik, 12–13 September 2000, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Formular 1’. Report on the work of the board of trustees of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future; July 2001, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘KuSi IV’. Republican Union of Jews from Moldova, former prisoners of Nazism to Otto Graf Lambsdorff, Stuart E. Eizenstat and Karl Brozik, May 2000, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘PO Ukraine’. Note on meeting at the German embassy Chisinau, 12 June 2001, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘PO Ukraine’. Karl Brozik to Natasha Malysheva, 28 June 2002, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘PO Russland’. All data after Claims Conference. Annual reports with highlights 1999– 2010. Karl Brozik to Gideon Taylor, 1 July 1999, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Zwangsarbeit 2’; Karl Brozik to Gideon Taylor, 2 June 1999, ibid. Ministry of Finance to Karl Brozik, 3 July 2000, Jewish Claims Conference, Key Documents, vol. 1, 11; Otto Graf Lambsdorff to Stuart E. Eizenstat, 11 July 2000, ibid., vol. 1, 7. Interview with Peter Heuss and Jens Hoppe, conducted by Patrice G. Poutrus, 2010. Karl Brozik to Michael Jansen and Dieter Kastrup, 30 October 2000, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Andere Haftsstätten 1’; Jens Hoppe to Jens Schley, 31 July 2003, EVZ Archives, 505.13/4. Note on slave labour in Romania, 14 May 2002, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Andere Haftstätten 2’; Memo on Romania, 1 October 2002, ibid.; Steven F. Sage, Jewish forced labor camps in Axis Bulgaria, 1941–1944, EVZ Archives, 505.13/1; on Bulgaria, see also Jens Hoppe, ‘Zwangsarbeit von Juden in Bulgarien während des Zweiten

102 • Benno Nietzel

49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

Weltkrieges: Die jüdischen Arbeitsbataillone 1941–45’, Südost-Forschung 63/64 (2004/05): 311–38. Karen Heilig to Jens Hoppe and Gideon Taylor, 12 February 2004, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Andere Haftstätten 5’. Rainer M. Türmer to Michael Jansen, 26 September 2002, EVZ Archives, 505.13/3; Karl Brozik to Gideon Taylor, 10 July 2003, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Andere Haftstätten 3’. Marc Masurovsky, Jewish forced labor in North Africa 1942–43, EVZ Archives, 505.13/2. Hanna Yablonka, ‘Übersehene Opfer: Entschädigung für Juden nord­ afrikanischer Abstammung’, in Norbert Frei, José Brunner and Constantin Goschler (eds), Die Praxis der Wiedergutmachung: Geschichte, Erfahrung und Wirkung in Deutschland und Israel, (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009), 356–86. Ibid. Agreement with the Foundation for Jewish Heritage in Hungary, 26 September 2001, Jewish Claims Conference, Key Documents, vol. 5, 123; Agreement with Israeli Post, 2000, Jewish Claims Conference, New York Office, 1805, 2; Outreach report, November 2000, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Outreach’. List of advertisements in Jewish newspapers, Jewish Claims Conference, New York Office, 1803, 19; Overview of activities in the USA and Canada, ibid., 1803, 16. Status report February 2002, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘KuSi 8’. Volunteer packet with sample forms, Jewish Claims Conference, New York Office, 1803, 18. Israel Miller to Otto Graf Lambsdorff, 21 August 2000, EVZ, 501.13. All data are from the Jewish Claims Conference internal database. Interview with Peter Heuss and Jens Hoppe, conducted by Patrice G. Poutrus, 2010. G.F. to Claims Conference, 25 June 2002, Jewish Claims Conference, New York Office. Decision of the Regional Court Frankfurt am Main, 31 March 2006, EVZ Archives, 505.13/4; Interview with Christiane Reh, conducted by Patrice G. Poutrus, 2010. All quotations taken, and where necessary translated, from EVZ Archives, 661.13. Ibid. Imre V. to Claims Conference, 11 April 2002, Jewish Claims Conference, New York Office, 18/5.6, folder ‘Thank You Letters’. Authers and Wolffe, The Victim’s Fortune, 194. Henry, Confronting the Perpetrators, 105–23. Raul Teitelbaum, Die biologische Lösung: Wie die Schoah ‘wiedergutgemacht’ wurde (Springe: zu Klampen, 2008), 291–303. Note on meeting with Noach Flug, 4 January 1999, Jewish Claims Conference, Frankfurt Office, folder ‘Zwangsarbeit 2’.

The Jewish Claims Conference and Compensation for Nazi Forced Labour 1951–2008 • 103

70. Report on meeting with representatives of the Holocaust Survivors Centre, 5 January 2004, EVZ Archives, 501.13. 71. Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London/New York: Verso, 2000). 72. Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999). 73. Omer Bartov, ‘Zweierlei Holocaust’, in Ernst Piper (ed.), Gibt es wirklich eine Holocaust-Industrie? Zur Auseinandersetzung um Norman Finkelstein (Zurich/ Munich: Pendo, 2001), 61–65; Petra Steinberger (ed.), Die Finkelstein-Debatte (Munich: Piper, 2001); Rolf Surmann (ed.), Das Finkelstein-Alibi: ‘HolocaustIndustrie’ und Tätergesellschaft (Cologne: PapyRossa, 2001). 74. Karl Brozik, ‘Gegendarstellung der Jewish Claims Conference’, Berliner Zeitung, 1 February 2001. 75. Michael Geier to Karl Brozik, 8 February 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.13. 76. Teitelbaum, Die biologische Lösung. 77. Ze’ev Sher to Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, 8 August 2003, EVZ Archives, 501.13. 78. Report on the recall of the head of the appeals body Jerusalem, 20 September 2005, EVZ Archives, 501.13; Georg Heuberger to Michael Jansen, 21 August 2006, ibid. 79. Teitelbaum, Die biologische Lösung.

Bibliography Authers, John and Richard Wolffe. The Victim’s Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle over the Debts of the Holocaust, New York: Harper Collins, 2002. Bartov, Omer. ‘Zweierlei Holocaust’, in Ernst Piper (ed.), Gibt es wirklich eine Holocaust-Industrie? Zur Auseinandersetzung um Norman Finkelstein, Zurich/ Munich: Pendo, 2001, 61–65. Barwig, Klaus, Günter Saathoff and Nicole Weyde (eds). Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit: Rechtliche, historische und politische Aspekte, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998. Bazyler, Michael J. Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America’s Courts, New York: New York University Press, 2003. Bazyler, Michael J., and Roger P. Alford (eds). Holocaust Restitution: Perspectives on the Litigation and Its Legacy, New York: New York University Press, 2006. Benz, Wolfgang. ‘Der Wollheim-Prozeß: Zwangsarbeit für I.G. Farben in Auschwitz’, in Ludolf Herbst and Constantin Goschler (eds), Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989, 303–26. Borggräfe, Henning. Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung: Vom Streit um ‘vergessene Opfer’ zur Selbstaussöhnung der Deutschen, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014. Eizenstat, Stuart. Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II, New York: Public Affairs, 2003. Ferencz, Benjamin B. Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

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Finkelstein, Norman G. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, London/New York: Verso, 2000. Goschler, Constantin. ‘Controversy about a Pittance: The Compensation of Forced Laborers from Concentration Camps by Germany’s Post-War Industry’, Dachau Review 1 (1988): 157–176. ———. Wiedergutmachung: Westdeutschland und die Verfolgten des Nationalsozialismus (1945–1954), Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992. ———. Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed., Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008. ———. ‘Die Auseinandersetzung um die Entschädigung der Zwangsarbeiter zwischen Kaltem Krieg und Globalisierung’, in Hans-Christoph Seidel and Klaus Tenfelde (eds), Zwangsarbeit im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts: Bewältigung und vergleichende Aspekte, Essen: Klartext, 2007, 115–30. Henry, Marilyn. Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the Claims Conference, London/Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007. Hense, Anja. Verhinderte Entschädigung: Die Entstehung der Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ für die Opfer von Zwangsarbeit und ‘Arisierung’, Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2008. Hockerts, Hans Günter. ‘Wiedergutmachung in Deutschland: Eine historische Bilanz 1945-2000’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 49 (2001): 167–214. ———. ‘Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa: Eine einführende Skizze’, in Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds), Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa, 1945–2000, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006, 7–58. Hoppe, Jens. ‘Zwangsarbeit von Juden in Bulgarien während des Zweiten Weltkrieges: Die jüdischen Arbeitsbataillone 1941–1945’, Südost-Forschung 63/64 (2004/05): 311–38. Krussig, Carolina. ‘Settlements between Single Firms and the Jewish Claims Conference before the Foundation Act 2000’, in Peer Zumbansen (ed.), Zwangsarbeit im Dritten Reich: Erinnerung und Verantwortung, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002 , 173–200. Marrus, Michael R. Some Measure of Justice: The Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. Niethammer, Lutz. ‘From Forced Labor in Nazi Germany to the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”: A Tentative History’, in Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff (eds) on behalf of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 15–85. Nietzel, Benno, and Patrice G. Poutrus. ‘Die Jewish Claims Conference und die Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit’, in Constantin Goschler (ed.), in cooperation with Jose Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts: Die Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ und ihre Partnerorganisationen, vol 2: Transnationale Opferanwaltschaft: Das Auszahlungsprogramm und die internationalen Organisationen, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012, 7–79.

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Novick, Peter. The Holocaust in American Life, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Rumpf, Joachim Robert. Der Fall Wollheim gegen die I.G. Farbenindustrie AG in Liquidation: Die erste Musterklage eines ehemaligen Zwangsarbeiters in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland – Prozess, Politik und Presse, Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2010. Sagi, Nana. German Reparations: A History of the Negotiations, Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1980. Spoerer, Mark. Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939–1945, Stuttgart/Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001. Steinberger, Petra (ed.). Die Finkelstein-Debatte, Munich: Piper, 2001. Surmann, Rolf (ed.). Das Finkelstein-Alibi: ‘Holocaust-Industrie’ und Tätergesellschaft, Cologne: PapyRossa, 2001. Teitelbaum, Raul. Die biologische Lösung: Wie die Schoa ‘wiedergutgemacht‘ wurde, Springe: Zu Klampen, 2008. Yablonka, Hanna. ‘Übersehene Opfer: Entschädigung für Juden nordafrikanischer Abstammung’, in Norbert Frei, José Brunner and Constantin Goschler (eds), Die Praxis der Wiedergutmachung: Geschichte, Erfahrung und Wirkung in Deutschland und Israel, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009, 356–86. Zweig, Ronald W. German Reparations and the Jewish World: A History of the Claims Conference, 2nd ed., London: Cass, 2001.

4 Compensating the Rest of the World The International Organization for Migration (IOM) Paul Erker

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) was the last of the seven partner organizations nominated to implement the forced labour compensation programme, in early July 2000.1 An NGO funded by ninety-one member states and based in Geneva, it was set up in 1951 to promote the return home and integration into society of refugees all over the world. Although the IOM did not have expertise in the compensation field, it had a wealth of experience of globally operating humanitarian missions and was accustomed to cooperating with a worldwide network of more than a hundred ‘field missions’ to carry them out. But by the time it was nominated to participate, all the key questions concerning the programme – its financial endowment, the compensation procedure and the distribution of responsibilities – had already been resolved. Not only that, but after the JCC was awarded an additional DM 260 million (€133 million) at the last minute, the IOM’s budget was reduced from DM 800 million (€409 million) to DM 540 million (€276 million). The IOM’s financial ceiling remained unpredictable throughout the entire process of implementing the German Forced Labour Compensation Programme (GFLCP). Consequently, its cooperation in the project was characterized by a combination of financial dilemmas, tactical manoeuvring and conflict, both with the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and with former persecutees.2 As a group, the IOM’s clients were not only more heterogeneous than those of the other partner organizations, they were also scattered across the entire globe. Claimants to the IOM came from some 180 nations. They represented every imaginable variation of fate suffered

Compensating the Rest of the World • 107

under Nazism, many of which had never previously been documented and thus fell outside the provisions of the statutory evaluation criteria for approving or rejecting claims. They ranged from Italian Military Internees (IMI) and Roma claimants to Red Spaniards detained in Mauthausen, Finns deported to Stutthof in 1944, Greek claimants in Pavlo Mela, Irish detained in Bremen-Farge, Yugoslavs deported to Norway and Serbians held in slave labour camps in Croatia. The IOM approached this tremendous challenge by creating a complex compensation infrastructure to deal with different aspects of the application and payment procedure. This consisted of an outreach programme, field offices across the globe and a sophisticated database system, on the basis of which a ‘claims processing strategy’ was developed. The IOM’s approach often clashed with the demands of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and there were frequent disputes, not only over financial issues, but also over basic questions such as how to process applications and implement the compensation programme. A constant point of contention between the two organizations was how to interpret the Foundation Law’s authentication criteria. In order to circumvent the monumental task of gathering evidence and gaining verification for each individual case, the IOM considered grouping applications into generalized categories of those who had suffered similar fates.3 However, this led to tensions between Geneva and Berlin, where the German foundation wanted ‘not an objective, rule-based assessment of the evidence contained in the claim file, but a subjective assessment of the credibility of the claimant taken from his/her “story”’, as IOM director de Winter wrote in a letter in October 2001. He also complained that the foundation insisted on: documentary proof beyond reasonable doubt at a level considerably higher than the Foundation Act standard of ‘probability’ … What is required rather than historian expertise are clear and administrable rules concerning legal and evidentiary matters and a stable system to ensure the practicality, feasibility and fairness of an approach that can resolve approximately 250,000 claims in 20 languages from more than 50 countries in a short time and with limited resources.4

It soon became clear that the IOM stood to receive many more applications than had originally been assumed. First estimated at 70,000, the number was later corrected to approximately 150,000, but in the event rose to double that figure – over 300,000. All in all, the IOM received and processed 327,031 claims, of which only 88,744 (27.2 per cent) were approved, and payments issued to the applicants. Of the total, 2,767 claims (0.8 per cent) had expired for various reasons, but the large

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majority of applications – 235,480 (72 per cent) – were rejected, almost all of them on grounds of non-entitlement according to the Foundation Act criteria. A total of 40,148 claimants were entitled to category A compensation, i.e. for forced or slave labour in a concentration camp; 30,718 were beneficiaries in category B (having performed forced labour as a consequence of deportation to Germany or in a German-occupied territory, and been confined in a prison or camp under very harsh conditions); 17,918 received category C compensation, established by means of the option clause, to provide for persons such as forced labourers in agriculture. Gradually it emerged that there were three large groups of claimants who had not previously been taken into consideration either by the IOM or by the foundation, and who posed a considerable problem for the programme. They were western European forced labourers, Italian Military Internees and Roma. This chapter will consider the consequences of the above issues for the general process of implementing the compensation programme and the significance of the compensation programme for the claimants.

Compensation Practice and Problems: Fate versus Compensation Category Classifying such heterogeneous groups of victims according to the categories determined by the Foundation Act was one of the greatest challenges for the IOM. The law stipulated a whole string of criteria that claimants had to fulfil to fall into the statutory compensation categories. Thus designed to limit the number of claimants, it nevertheless left scope for including persecutees by means of specific interpretations and negotiation. Below, I will analyse the processes by which this was done, taking both individual cases and groups defined by a shared fate as examples from the mass of the IOM’s claimants, in the context of the programme’s increasingly convoluted regulations, and with special emphasis on the claimants’ perspective. One of the first groups to be identified was that of western European claimants, i.e. former forced labourers and prisoners of war from France, Belgium and the Netherlands. To be recognized as forced labourers under the Foundation Act, claimants had to fulfil three criteria: they had to have been deported to Germany, have performed forced labour and have been confined in prison-like, extremely harsh conditions. From the start, there was intense disagreement between the IOM and the foundation over the practical interpretation of these three criteria. The criterion of deportation proved to be especially

Compensating the Rest of the World • 109

problematic in the case of persons deported to Romania, Hungary, Finland and other German-allied states, for which the Foundation Act made no provision. Most former forced labourers from western Europe fulfilled the first two criteria of deportation and forced labour, but not the criterion of confinement in particularly harsh conditions. It was generally assumed that they had been treated better than forced labourers from eastern European countries. French, Belgian and Dutch claimants, who had been deported to Germany and deployed as forced labourers in the arms industry, were therefore not eligible for compensation. Exceptions were, however, made in two cases: that of western Europeans who had been forced to perform slave labour while concentration camp inmates or interned in a similar place of confinement, and those who had been held in extremely harsh conditions in prison-like camps. Before the end of 2000, the IOM managers issued an urgent request to the foundation to compile a list of the relevant camps and places of confinement. This placed the IOM staff in the position of having to conduct time-consuming research into individual cases rather than being able to rely on general, collective categories. They set about the arduous, painstaking task of assessing the claims from France, Belgium, the Netherlands and other western European countries, using the database to generate profiles of typical claimants. In this way, they could ensure that certain norms applied when classifying victim groups and that their decisions were consistent. Soon a number of distinct victim groups with similar fates began to emerge from the mass of claims. There were, for example, the 350 Belgian and Dutch former forced labourers who had worked underground in aircraft construction in the Jena area and been housed in the nearby Kahla forced labourer camp.5 The hundreds of former forced labourers from France, Belgium and the Netherlands who had been interned in the Emsland camp complex along the Dutch border formed another group with similar histories. These claimants, too, testified to the harshest conditions and severest abuses in the individual sub-camps. But assessing their case was far from straightforward since the fifteen camps making up the complex had all performed a range of functions at different points over the years, being used varyingly as concentration camps, prison camps, military prison camps for the Wehrmacht, prisoner of war camps and transit camps for western European forced labourers.6 In late February 2003, the foundation’s board of directors issued equally complex regulations for recognizing the individual sub-camps as ‘other places of confinement’.7 A major problem was the fact ‘that some claimants transited through recognized slave labour camps on their way to forced labour in Germany. They usually stayed between

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a couple of days and a few weeks in these camps and were most often not registered’. This applied above all to forced labourers from western European countries.8 By degrees, the IOM’s approach to claim processing – by schematically identifying victim groups and applying the principle of general entitlement – was increasingly undermined. With each successive ruling, the foundation placed more emphasis on individual case checks and individual eligibility, and forced the IOM to abandon the principle of treating all claimants equally. Again and again, the foundation and the IOM clashed over the issue of assessing and categorizing individual histories. In the end, of the 27,157 claims that the IOM received from France, only 5,827 (or 5,770 after the foundation’s checks) were approved, and thousands of them were only verified by the IOM’s appeals body after protests had been lodged and other time-consuming checks had been carried out. One typical example is that of the French forced labourer who had been deported from Limoges to Brüx in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in June 1943 and periodically interned in a prison camp. His claim was rejected so he lodged an appeal, providing a more detailed account of the reasons for his internment and an in-depth description of the conditions in the camp, and the IOM eventually classified him as a forced labourer.9 Many claimants whose applications were initially rejected were outraged and embarked on lengthy appeal proceedings. At the final count, 3,135 claimants from Belgium and 3,529 claimants from the Netherlands were recognized as eligible and received compensation payments. The Italian Military Internees (IMI) formed a special group among the western European claimants. Under the Foundation Act, prisoners of war were not eligible for compensation. This applied even to prisoners of war who had been made to perform civilian forced labour if they had formally retained their status as prisoners of war. They were excluded on the grounds that the scheme responded specifically to ‘Nazi injustice’ and was not based on general international law or reparations law. Only one exception was provided for: that of prisoners of war who had been stripped of their military status and who also fulfilled the criteria of deportation and forced labour under extremely harsh conditions or in a concentration camp. As straightforward as this regulation seems at first glance, the over 130,000 claims submitted to the IOM by former Italian Military Internees required a great deal of consideration and clarification. These applicants had been among the ‘forgotten victims’ of the Nazi regime both in Germany and Italy and remained largely overlooked by both countries’ memorial cultures until the 1990s.10

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The international negotiations preceding the establishment of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ cast the fate of the IMI into the public eye. As a consequence, their hopes for gaining long overdue recompense and symbolic recognition grew. In parallel, victims’ associations stepped up their activities and a number of historical research projects were launched, including large-scale eyewitness surveys. The debate over whether the IMI should be included in or excluded from the compensation programme – a clash of interests that sparked conflicts and triggered decision-making processes – ­provides an illustration of the difficult context in which the foundation operated in general. It had in principle been aware of the legal difficulties involved in compensating the IMI from the start, since there were already in-depth historical studies available on them, unlike most of the IOM’s other client victim groups.11 As former German allies, the IMI were indisputably among the hardest hit by the Nazi regime’s political and racist discrimination and had suffered some of the worst persecution alongside Jews and concentration camp inmates. Nonetheless, their case was at first largely ignored in Berlin. When the foundation began to tackle the issue, it completely underestimated both its quantitative scale and its politically explosive nature. As late as December 2000, the IOM still expected to receive roughly 30,000 IMI claims. It was therefore quite unprepared for the flood of over 120,000 applications from Italian claimants with which it was inundated a short time later. As ever more IMI claims arrived, the IOM was compelled to deal more intensively with the historical and legal aspects of this group’s fate. Staff consulted Italian victims’ associations and German historians in a bid to better understand the issue. These efforts culminated in December 2000 in a paper by the IOM declaring its position on compensation for the IMI. The paper stated: ‘It seems legitimate to assume that the IMI are entitled to the compensation both with respect to the period they spent as internees in concentration camps … as well as in respect of the period after their “release” in which they were deployed as forced labour as civilians’.12 The German Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Finance responded by urging the foundation to take the opinion of a specialist in international law, stressing the need to give adequate consideration to the political and financial implications of the matter for Germany. In this way, the ministries aimed to legitimize their political goal of excluding Italians from the compensation scheme. The number of former Italian Military Internees was evidently so great that the cost of compensating them threatened to exceed the total sum set aside for all western European forced labourers by a considerable margin. As the IOM’s position paper

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had asserted, the ministries hoped to conceal their ‘political intention not to afford any compensation beyond the agreed DM 10 billion … by pseudo-legal arguments’.13 The expert’s opinion was, from the claimants’ point of view, completely detached from the historical reality.14 Yet the IOM issued notices of rejection accordingly, and the burden of assessing IMI claims was shifted to the IOM appeals body. It received a total of 32,319 complaints, more than half of which (17,000) came from former IMI. But they were by no means the only Italian claimants. Claims were also filed by former civilian workers and forced labourers from Italy who had been transferred to Germany mostly voluntarily before September 1943, but forcibly deported as civilians thereafter. The IOM appeals body had the difficult task of filtering out not only the few eligible IMI but also the eligible Italian civilians who had been deported as forced labourers to concentration camps and other places of confinement. Eventually, three distinct groupings fulfilling the foundation’s criteria began to crystallize: IMI interned in concentration camps; Italian nationals with partisan status who had been interned on political grounds; and lastly, Italians without any specific legal status who had been captured by German troops shortly after 8 November 1943 while drifting following their release, escape or desertion (sbandato) or simply civilians who had been arrested. The historical facts, so the argument in Geneva ran, showed that the status of IMIs had changed several times between 1943 and 1945: ‘IMIs faced a unique situation combining de-jure POW status under international law with a de-facto forced labourer status under the Nazi regime. Given this situation, the IOM Appeals Body believes that the IMI should be considered a group “sui generis” who must be further differentiated with a view to determine their eligibility under the Foundation Act’.15 Ultimately, only 431 IMI claimants of a total 3,241 applications from Italian claimants were approved.16 The IMI’s experience of the compensation programme illustrates the stark contrast between the victims’ personal views of their histories and the legal assessment of their claims. Comparing their treatment to that of the Polish former prisoners of war, who were recognized as eligible for compensation on the grounds that the act was ‘generally oriented to eastern Europe’, the former IMI felt unfairly treated and discriminated against. And while other partner organizations could take advantage of the option clause to extend their range of entitled persons, the IOM was expressly prevented from using it to benefit the IMI. Alongside the claimants from western European countries, the second main group of IOM claimants was from eastern and south eastern European countries. A total of over 100,000 men and women

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from these countries, who saw themselves as victims of Nazi persecution, sent applications for compensation to Geneva. This group was no less heterogeneous in terms of nationality and histories of persecution than the first. And here, too, the Foundation Act drew a clear dividing line between different groupings, distinguishing between former forced labourers from eastern European countries with Slavic roots or from ‘Slavic countries’,17 and those from former German-allied axis countries. The law stipulated that the former should be presumed eligible in view of the high probability of them having been interned in extremely harsh, prison-like conditions and of having performed forced labour. The latter, in contrast, were collectively presumed under the law to have worked voluntarily for the Nazi regime. They were therefore excluded from the compensation scheme. While this created neatly delineated categories on paper, the claimants’ wide-ranging accounts of persecution showed that the historical reality was far more complex. Under the Foundation Law, persons from the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia were presumed beyond doubt to have suffered atrocious living conditions. There was less certainty, however, about claimants from Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia and Kosovo, who were thought to have been discriminated against only in practical, not legal, terms. The foundation applied a firm ‘presumption against extremely harsh living conditions’ to persons from Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania, but presumed claimants from Slovenia to have suffered them, although it pointed out that ‘some groups may not fall within the presumption’.18 Ultimately, the IOM was obliged again to conduct time-consuming assessments of individual case histories rather than being able to fall back on group assessments. The case of claimants from Serbia provides a striking example of the complications that arose while assessing individual histories. Submitting a total of 18,577 claims, Serbians formed the fourth largest claimant group to the IOM after the Italians, French and Dutch. Among the Serbian claimants were several hundred former Yugoslav prisoners who had been taken to forced labour camps in Norway between June 1942 and April 1943. Some had been taken to southern Norway by the Organisation Todt, others to northern Norway by the SS, in many cases following terrible odysseys through transit camps in Serbia, Croatia, Austria and Germany. The foundation did not dispute that the Serbians’ camp experience warranted compensation or that conditions in the Norwegian camps had been atrocious. But the Serbians in question, most of whom had been partisans, had been assigned prisoner of war status in about April 1943 under pressure from the international community, and the camps had been taken over by the Wehrmacht.

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Many Serbian claims were therefore initially rejected as the claimants qualified as prisoners of war. Another group of claimants with similar histories, the assessment of which was similarly complicated, emerged from the applications of some 1,000 Serbians who had been deported in April/May 1941 to the Sarvar camp in Hungary. They had been made to perform forced labour and many were still detained there even after Germany’s occupation of Hungary in March 1944. In January 2004, the foundation ruled that Sarvar was to be recognized as an ‘other place of confinement’, albeit only from March 1944 and on the proviso that ‘proof of forced labour [be provided] on an individual basis’.19 Several hundred claimants of Serbian origin who had been deported to the notorious Pavlo Mela camp in Greece between 1941 and 1944 received similar treatment. They responded with disbelief and indignation to the manner in which their persecution histories were now being bureaucratically dissected. ‘Serbians deported to Pavlo Mela after spring 1942’, the IOM’s panel of experts noted in its Assessment Guidelines: can be upgraded to cat. 1. We can presume that they were deported as partisans. They do not need to state a political reason. Serbians deported to Pavlo Mela between July 1941 and spring 1942 might have been ‘normal forced workers’ or even volunteers. For credible detention we need a valid political reason. Serbians deported in April/May 1941 to Pavlo Mela should be rejected as POW.20

About half of the Serbian claims submitted (8,918) were rejected for these or similar reasons, even on appeal in many cases. The IOM’s list of camps in Croatia included the Sisak children’s camp. Officially a ‘reception point for child refugees’, this camp de facto served to imprison the roughly 7,000 children whose parents had been arrested as Yugoslav partisans and shot or made to perform forced labour. Indeed, the majority of Serbian claimants had been persecuted as children. The IOM found that they thus adequately fulfilled the eligibility criteria for compensation and recommended issuing payments to them. But the foundation disagreed on the grounds that the camp had not been set up specifically to imprison children.21 There were even more tragic cases of child deportation among the claims from Slovenia, which came to dominate the assessment and decision-making procedure.22 The IOM received 12,401 compensation claims from Slovenian former forced labourers. They reflected more than ever the complex fate of the region, which had then been part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. German, Italian and Hungarian troops occupied Slovenia in early April 1941, dividing it into three zones of

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occupation. Some villages in the south east belonged to Croatia as it was then.23 Consequently, some 30,000 Slovenians were expelled, forcibly resettled or deported to Germany to perform forced labour.24 Many claims testified to Slovenian girls and women being used in private households as nannies or housemaids. But they were not entitled to compensation from the scheme.25 Those who had been deported as children with their parents also fell outside the foundation’s eligibility categories. The most tragic Slovenian cases were those of claimants who had been abducted in August 1942 and taken together with some 1,200 other Slovenians to the Celje camp. Here, children were separated from their parents and other family members and some 600 of the girls and boys taken by the Nazi organization Lebensborn to a camp in Bavaria. Many of these recently orphaned children – their parents had been murdered – were then given up for adoption. Although the fact that they had been confined in children’s homes was undisputed, they were not entitled to compensation under the Foundation Law since they had not been made to perform forced labour. In the end, a solution was found in their favour via the compensation category of ‘other personal injury’.26 Thus, with 10,820 claims approved in different categories, a high proportion of Slovenian claims were ultimately successful; 1,368 claims were rejected. Where claimants from Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia were concerned – the IOM had received a total of 6,088 claims from Hungary and 4,429 from Slovakia by the end of 2001 – the foundation’s regulations were clear: former forced labourers from the then German-allied axis countries were not eligible for compensation as they did not fulfil the criterion of deportation under German orders. The only exception was made for those who had been interned in a concentration camp, ghetto or ‘other place of confinement’. Slovakian and Hungarian workers fell into the category of ‘voluntary foreign civilian workers’, at least until Germany’s occupation in March 1944 and in some cases even ‘well into 1945’.27 Thousands of them – 4,902 Hungarians and 3,440 Slovakians – consequently received rejections from Geneva, both in the first instance and on appeal. Even Hungarian former forced labourers who had been deported to Germany shortly before or after Germany’s occupation of Hungary received nothing unless they were able to provide evidence in their individual cases that they had been ‘held together with members of a persecuted group and thus [had been] held under harsh living conditions’ or unless they ‘credibly demonstrated that [they] received the same treatment as other detainees who were members of persecuted groups’.28 In view of the high rate of rejection of claims from this group, it was not surprising

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that the IOM received many letters of protest, expressing the disappointment and anger of those affected.29 Working under considerable financial constraints, and with a wide range of persecutee groups struggling for recognition, the IOM managers cooperating in the German Forced Labour Programme were compelled to go to great lengths to compile lists of ‘other places of confinement’ and apply to have them recognized by the foundation. In many cases they succeeded, thanks to the convincing wealth of historical knowledge they had acquired in the process of assessing claims, as well as their tenacity. The case of the Roma claimants provides an important example of this.

Roma as a Persecuted Group Under the Foundation Law, Roma had the same status as Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. They were considered a population group who had suffered persecution on racist grounds with intent to exterminate, but who had hitherto been largely excluded from the various compensation and restitution programmes. Roma therefore saw themselves as among the ‘forgotten victims’ of Nazi persecution or, more explicitly, as victims of the ‘forgotten Holocaust’.30 Against this background, the foundation aimed to give them special consideration. Hence, it seemed as if the assessment of Roma claims would be safe from the negative influence of political or financial considerations, in contrast to the IMI claims. But it soon emerged that this was not the case. One problem was that the Roma did not have a unified representation of interests but several rival organizations, competing both on a national and an international level. It was almost impossible for an outside observer to gauge how much influence and support each of these had among the Roma population. Hence, the Roma were effectively a group without a lobby. In principle, at least in the IOM managers’ view, the Roma most closely resembled the profile of the IOM’s original clientele. It was, after all, an NGO that had been set up to deal with all matters concerning global migration. However, it was surprisingly ill-informed about the cultural, regional and material specificities of the Roma population. Nevertheless, the IOM alternately acted as a mouthpiece and a mediator for Roma claimants. On several occasions, IOM staff sidestepped the organization’s theoretical role of neutral ‘compensation processing institution’ to actively represent the interests of this victim group. The Roma formed an extremely heterogeneous population group, spanning considerable regional and cultural

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distances as well as a range of different histories of persecution. Not widely perceived or statistically accounted for as a distinct group in any country, they could at best be classified in terms of ethnicity, but not nationality. All these factors had an impact on the compensation procedure. A basic starting point for the IOM staff was the question: Who are the Roma survivors?31 Most of them lived on the margins of society, some leading a nomadic existence in rural areas. Many had not had any schooling and could not read or write. It was only in the process of dealing with their applications for compensation that the IOM began to form individual and group profiles of Roma victims. Most countries had no idea how many potentially eligible Roma claimants were resident. Eventually, in the context of the GFLCP, 43,000 Roma survivors were identified in seventeen countries, only about 19,000 (44 per cent) of whom were registered with the IOM as claimants. They included 2,800 Roma from Hungary, 5,700 from Romania, 4,500 from the countries of former Yugoslavia, almost 2,000 from Germany and 100 from France. Among the Roma there were many different histories of persecution and a number of distinct groupings. But what many Roma had in common, which distinguished them from other victim groups, was the experience of persecution not only by ‘German’ perpetrators but also by local – for example, Ukrainian or Romanian – police or government authorities. What is more, the Roma uniquely suffered overlapping phases of persecution, from the Nazi era to more recent discrimination and marginalization, whether in Yugoslavia during the civil war or in Romania in the 1990s. The Roma history of persecution was an ongoing one.32 All this shaped the Roma’s specific culture of remembrance, which had only recently evolved from virtually nothing in reaction to persecution remembrance by Jewish Holocaust survivors and the Jewish Holocaust in general. Roma tended to feel overlooked and unfairly treated in comparison to other victim groups. Once the Roma began practising remembrance, a clear gender distinction emerged: for fear of disgrace, Roma women continued for many years to shroud their memories in silence and taboos. It is only recently that Roma women as well as men have begun to recall their specific histories of persecution, partly as a consequence of a number of oral history projects. Insofar as there was and is any kind of common remembrance, it centres largely around deportation from Transnistria.33 The German Forced Labour Compensation Programme did not, as one might have expected, mark the first time that Roma victims had confronted the matter of compensation, as it did for other persecuted groups for whom it had a sustained effect on processes and cultures of

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remembrance. Roma in Germany had witnessed a wide range of compensation schemes since the 1950s. But they had largely been discriminated against on a compensation level, and many had not received any payments until the 1980s. Similarly, in many eastern European countries various compensation programmes were launched in quick succession. In the case of Romania, for example, resident Roma were confronted with a total of four programmes between 1998 and 2000: the Swiss Fund for Needy Victims of the Holocaust; the Swiss Banks Settlement; the German Fund for Needy Victims of Nazi Persecution; and the GFLCP, which forms the focus of this book. Strictly speaking, the number of programmes totalled six, as alongside the German foundation’s forced labour compensation programme there were also schemes to compensate health damages as a consequence of medical experiments (other personal injury) and to provide concrete emergency aid for Roma in eastern European countries (RHS-HSP). By the time the German GFLCP project started, then, many Romanian Roma had already had negative, or at any rate highly ambivalent, experiences of compensation programmes.34 Most were, moreover, in no position to distinguish between the different programmes. Whether they received a cheque for forced labour compensation or material assistance as part of the HSP programme was largely irrelevant to them. To reach Roma claimants, the IOM engaged the help of dozens of field assistants, who were mostly recruited from the various Roma organizations and who quickly formed crucial links to the claimants. These assistants travelled to rural villages and communities to meet potential Roma beneficiaries and help with their claims. Having actually been employed to help with the first phase of the scheme, they often remained informal confidants of the claimants for the entire time it took to process claims. As one assistant later reported: Our official involvement ended with the notification phase – however we and various people we collaborated with during the campaign continued to receive many phone calls and visits from people who were trying to figure out what happened to their applications – and we assisted dozens by mediating with the IOM, calling the hotline (while it worked), writing letters, etc.35

Applicants relied heavily on this assistance partly because of the claims procedure’s lack of transparency. What happened to their applications once submitted or when, or indeed whether, they would ever receive any money was a mystery to them. The IOM office in Bucharest refused to answer any enquiries, directing people to the IOM headquarters in Geneva instead.

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Whether they liked it or not, the field assistants, and especially the voluntary helpers who had been recruited from Roma organizations, assumed a role that went far beyond the GFLCP’s outreach and claim assistance in terms of both duration and function. Many of them were still actively involved in the claim processing four years later. Despite the strict clan divisions governing their loyalties, the Roma claimants had come to accept the helpers as contacts and confidants. It was not uncommon for helpers to find that up to fifty Roma from all parts of the country had gathered overnight in front of their house to seek help, advice and information in connection with the compensation programme.36 This was one of the unintended side effects of the compensation programme resulting from its practice rather than its official regulating mechanisms. In April 2004, another development occurred that neither the foundation nor the IOM had foreseen. The transfer of a substantial payment tranche to Romania sparked the rumour, which was supported and spread by local newspapers and various Roma organizations, that the old time limits had been lifted and that new applications to the IOM were being accepted. Within a few weeks, the IOM in Geneva was inundated with a flood of some 20,000 letters, emails and telephone enquiries. In sheer desperation, the overwhelmed IOM staff simply shut down the organization’s telephone hotline and email service for Romanian applicants.37 The scheme’s payment practice was also hampered by a number of problems. Many Roma had the same first names and surnames, making it almost impossible for postal workers to know whether cheques were being delivered into the right hands. Furthermore, Roma communities relied predominantly on cash. Few Roma had ever seen or dealt with a cheque before. Once the question of what to do with cheques had been answered with the help of younger family members or claim assistants, the next obstacle arose: the long distance to the nearest bank. Not only that, if Roma survivors actually dared to set foot inside a bank in Bucharest, it was not uncommon for them to be immediately thrown out again.38 What is more, no Romanian bank employees had heard of ‘Citibank’, the institution charged with issuing the cheques, and they refused to cash claimants’ cheques as a result. By the time it came to paying out the second instalment, the IOM had at least made the improvement of adding claimants’ birthdates to the names and addresses on the envelopes to assist identification.39 ‘It was a huge mess with the cheques and especially so because it was all done from Geneva. The way they did it led to big delays in payment for some people – if the cheque was sent back for some reason it was very difficult for people

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to get new cheques as they could not get through to IOM Geneva.’40 In the event, the teams of assistants remained active during and even after the payment phase, helping not only to cash cheques but also to use the money appropriately, whether by opening savings accounts, paying long overdue gas and electricity bills or for renovation work on housing, or by obtaining urgently needed medical care. While this should have been the task of the Romanian welfare state, its limited provisions in fact covered scarcely any of the Roma’s medical needs. In the space of a few months in late 2001, the IOM received thousands of Roma claims. As was generally the case with claims to the IOM, they shed light on a plethora of hitherto unresearched histories of persecution, both individual and collective, of which the foundation had previously had no idea. One of the groups of victims thus discovered was that of Hungarian Roma deported to the Mátészalka assembly camp in spring 1944 and made to perform forced labour there or on surrounding farms. In the first instance, these applicants were rejected as the IOM staff were not aware of the nature of the Mátészalka camp and assessed their situation as straightforward deployment in agriculture that did not entitle them to compensation. But this decision was revised on appeal and the claimants in question were placed in the slave labour category. Similar assessments were made concerning Roma who had been interned in other camps, such as Komárom. The IOM also received claims from Sweden and Finland, mainly from formerly Polish Roma. As previously in the case of south eastern European claimants, checking and assessing these Roma claims was complicated not only by the lack of individual evidence available, but also by the fact that IOM staff often had no knowledge of the historical events shaping the persecution history of this victim group. This was particularly true of the victim group consisting of approximately 25,000 Romanian Roma who were deported in 1942/43 to Transnistria, which was controlled by German troops but occupied by Romania at the time. Only about 6,000 of these Roma survived deportation to return to Romania after the end of the war.41 Many of the survivors now filed compensation claims for the first time. The IOM received a total of 5,700 claims from Romanian Roma, of which almost half – 2,356 – were made on grounds of deportation to and persecution in Transnistria. Many applications testified to terrible living conditions and forced labour for various German and Romanian agencies, without specifically naming them. But IOM staff automatically rejected applications which did not mention certain key names such as Bug or Transnistria. The only way for these applicants to still gain a positive response was to file an appeal providing additional

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information. Although a number of Romanian and international studies on the Transnistria deportations had already been published, they focused mainly on the fate of the deported Romanian Jews. Hence, the IOM and the Romanian government presumed that the Roma had not suffered a comparable fate.42 At this time, the Romanian government officially denied that the mass murder of Roma had ever taken place. Opinions in the country were informed by deep-seated gypsyist sentiment as well as gaps in the authorities’ historical knowledge.43 But the numerous applications from ‘Transnistria Roma’, often with page-long descriptions of their suffering during deportation attached, revealed the truth of the Roma past that still remained to be confronted. In their applications to the IOM, persecutees recounted their individual and collective stories of deportation in vivid detail. While it is true that they did so with the help of third parties, it is clear that they did not resort to stereotypes or fabrications for the sake of meeting compensation criteria. Eventually, the IOM channelled all this information into a fourteenpage booklet of ‘Assessment Guidelines’, summarizing the facts for ascertaining the eligibility of Roma claimants, in as carefully differentiated a manner as possible. In the case of the Hungarian Roma, for example, five main categories were meticulously identified from the thousands of claims from this group (the exact number was 2,800), each with specific ‘patterns of detention or persecution’, which were to be differently assessed under the Foundation Law. As complicated and time-consuming as this process was, having these ‘persecution categories’ to refer to provided the IOM staff with certain norms by which they could process and assess claims. But one major problem remained: how to categorize the large groups of Roma victims who had apparently been interned in hitherto unknown places of imprisonment or ghettos. The onus lay on the German foundation to answer this question, but first it had to agree with the Ministry of Finance on the precise connotations of the term ‘ghetto’. Only then could it categorize the persecution the Roma in question had suffered and determine their victim status. Gradually, some camps were recognized, such as the so-called ‘Gypsy camp’ in Slovakia. The seven camps in which Slovakian Roma had been detained were each placed in different categories, ranging from assembly camps to labour or ‘labour and reformatory camps’ (Arbeitserziehungslager) for ‘asocial elements’ and special camps for Roma where concentration camp-like conditions prevailed. It was determined that only persons ‘who were detained in these camps on grounds of race’ were eligible under the Foundation Act, and that ‘the current state of information on

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the Komarno camp does not justify the presumption that forced labour here was general. In this case, forced labour is to be individually verified.’44 For the other camps, in contrast, a ‘legal presumption’ of forced labour applied. Lastly, after almost a year, in May 2003, the Maribor camp in Slovenia was recognized as a place of detention for the period between autumn 1941 and January 1945. Discussions of the definition and appropriate use of the term ‘ghetto’ then sparked the debate on recognizing ‘other places of confinement’ in early 2003. The status of official ghettos, such as Warsaw, was never in dispute. But it was uncertain how many, if any, of the large number of Roma camps and places of confinement could also be defined as ghettos. From the mass of applications reaching the IOM, some patterns in persecution histories had emerged that raised the question of whether it might be possible, or necessary, to categorically recognize the conditions that many Roma had lived in as similar to ghettos, thus ensuring these claimants’ eligibility. In particular, it concerned the approximately 25,000 Roma deported from Romania to Transnistria. Thousands of the survivors had in fact filed compensation claims with the IOM some years previously.45 By this time, historical studies had shown that the entire region could be considered an ‘extermination area’. More than seventy-five camps in the region had already been recognized as forced labour camps for Jews and there was every reason to presume that the Roma deported and interned there had also lived in ghetto-like conditions and been made to perform forced labour. Yet the Ministry of Finance insisted on a restrictive definition of the term ‘ghetto’ to apply only to places where Jews had been confined. Undeniably, faced with the prospect of some 5,400 claims from Romanian Roma, the majority of whom had been deported and confined in ghettos in Transnistria, the German treasury’s main priority was to limit the scope for eligibility. Despite this, the foundation and the IOM eventually agreed to recognize the ghettos in question as ‘other places of confinement’ without requiring any further time-consuming investigations, and to assume that the criteria of forced labour was fulfilled across the board. The applicants concerned therefore fell into category A, and the Ministry of Finance could hardly object.46 But it was not until June 2004 – almost four years after the issue of ‘Roma ghettos’ had first entered into the compensation debate – that all cases were settled and the last Roma claimants were recognized as eligible and, after some further delays, received their compensation payments. Nobody was keen to reveal the real reasons for the process taking so long or the constraints the IOM had been working under. The entire compensation process therefore seemed extremely non-transparent from the claimants’ point of view.

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In the final analysis, the IOM’s compensation of Roma was a qualified success. Of the originally estimated 43,000 potentially eligible Roma survivors, some 19,000 filed claims for forced labour compensation. Almost 12,000 (63 per cent) of these claims were approved, resulting in payments, predominantly under category A, i.e. slave labour. In other words, almost thirty per cent of all the successful claims in category A were by Roma victims. In view of the prevailing confusion, many of them would probably not have received any compensation had it not been for the commitment of the IOM workers who negotiated and, if necessary, challenged the regulations of the Foundation Law. Still, many of those affected were not reached at all, and many others, though feeling that justice had been done at last, had a sense of having been ‘wrongly’ compensated. From the perspective of former deportees to Transnistria, forced labour was not the crucial aspect of their persecution. In their eyes, the main injustice was having their horses and caravans seized and their families’ traditional gold jewellery stolen. In their view, then, compensation for property losses would have been more ‘just’. Furthermore, the outcome of the claims was overshadowed in their minds by the sobering and often humiliating experience of claim processing, from the complications involved in obtaining documents to the absurd difficulties caused by the arrival of compensation cheques. Furthermore, as far as most claimants were concerned, the programmes behind the various payments were indistinguishable. Similarly, the numerous stipulations and regulations governing claim processing made each claimant’s experience of the compensation process different and prevented claimants from forming a consolidated group identity. The number of organizations representing Roma interests has subsequently risen rather than fallen and rivalry between them has grown. What is more, the compensation payments failed to improve claimants’ individual or collective standard of living in the long term, as IOM staff had envisaged. Ideally, it was hoped, the money would help Roma live out their lives in comfort. In reality, however, the situation was very different. Since welfare benefits were hard to come by in many eastern European countries, especially for Roma, compensation payments were often used to pay for urgently needed operations or medication for the claimants or their partners. Much of the money was soon expended in this way. Traditional burials also consumed a great deal of compensation money. Attended by hundreds of mourners and stretching over several days, they were costly affairs for the immediate families of the deceased, who paid for their guests’ accommodation and provisions. On the whole, then, the compensation payments did not achieve very far-reaching or enduring results on a community level.

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The money was spent on claimants’ and their relatives’ most immediate individual needs. For this reason, it can be assumed to have benefited the younger generation as well as the older. Certainly, much was done in the short term to improve the circumstances of the elderly Roma via humanitarian aid programmes, such as the allocation of winter relief and food allowances to the eldest and most in need. But, as the IOM staff came to realize while administering the humanitarian projects, this still left many long-term problems unresolved. Ultimately, not much was achieved by affording one individual Roma medical help as long as the Roma as a community were not integrated into their country’s public health system and were barred from state facilities such as schools and colleges. In effect, little of the compensation went towards improving this situation. For this reason, even after the compensation programme had been completed, the Roma remained more or less ‘forgotten victims’ of the Holocaust.

Conclusion The IOM was originally engaged to issue compensation to the former eastern European forced labourers who had migrated all over the world. But in fact, the latter only made up about twenty per cent of the IOM’s claimants. It was the groups thought to be exceptional cases – the IMI, Roma and western European forced labourers – who actually constituted the majority of claimants and dominated the IOM’s claim processing. Their claims and the investigations they prompted, extending far beyond the IOM’s original brief, brought to light hitherto unknown aspects of the complex history of persecution during the Second World War. To some extent, echoes of what began as an institutional learning process could even be perceived in the public sphere. The outcome of the IOM’s cooperation in the compensation project should not only be viewed in the light of obvious deficits, or what was not achieved. The programme could not be, and was not conceived to be, a panacea for long-term, ingrained patterns of discrimination. Certainly, the extreme imbalance that the IOM operated under, with a constantly expanding universe of potential claimants on the one hand and a budget kept tight for political reasons on the other, gave rise to many obvious conflicts and paradoxes regarding compensation for historical injustice. Since resources were limited, political and administrative selections had to be made. It is primarily the criteria for these and the conflicts arising from them which this chapter has endeavoured to analyse.

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Although the IOM was initially more removed from its clients than the other partner organizations, its staff came to develop an empathetic attitude towards them in reaction to the computerized, efficiency-oriented bureaucracy they necessarily operated with. If the general ‘tried and tested’ principles did not tally with local realities, IOM employees were prepared to challenge standard administrative procedures. However, the Geneva-based organization’s identity as a fair representative of claimants’ interests and a trustee of the compensation process contrasted with the view of many claimants that it proved the basic inappropriateness of dealing with compensation in a bureaucratic way. Indeed, the IOM was to a large extent simply the implementing organ of a scheme dictated by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. As such, its central concern was ensuring legal security with limited financial resources. This in turn gave rise to the core field of tension affecting its work: the foundation’s rationale of assessing histories individually and limiting the total number of claims – ­leading to a strategy of exclusion, at least where the ‘rest of the world’ was concerned – clashed with the IOM’s mission to identify collective persecutee groups and serve as many clients as possible. It is, then, hardly surprising that the process seemed arbitrary and illogical to many claimants. Alongside the question of whether compensation payments are an appropriate response to historical injustice, this tension perhaps marks the greatest challenge to such compensation programmes. Paul Erker is Adjunct Professor at Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich, Germany. His research focuses on business and economic history, on which he has published numerous books and articles, including Bosch: History of a Global Enterprise, together with Johannes Bähr (Munich: Beck, 2016).

Notes  1. See an extended version of this chapter: Paul Erker, ‘Compensating the Rest of the World: Das Entschädigungsmanagement der International Organization for Migration’, in Constantin Goschler (ed.), in cooperation with José Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts, vol. 2: Transnationale Opferanwaltschaft: Das Auszahlungsprogramm und die internationalen Organisationen (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 80–196.  2. On the history of the IOM, see Marianne Ducasse-Rogier, L’Organisation Internationale pour les Migrations 1951–2001 (Geneva: IOM, 2002).

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 3. De Winter to Jansen, 29 March 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.12.  4. De Winter to Jansen and Bräutigam, 23 October 2001, ibid.  5. Board ruling, 25 February 2004, with an in-depth assessment of the Kahla  camp complex, ibid., and the IOM Assessment Guidelines, p. 23, IOM files.  6. Note, 6 November 2002, EVZ Archives, 505.12.  7. Board rulings on ‘other places of confinement’, 26 February 2003 and 15 June 2004, ibid.  8. IOM Assessment Guidelines, p. 16, IOM files.  9. On this and other cases, see the minutes by the Appeals Body of the twelfth meeting, 17–18 February 2005, IOM files. 10. See Cord Pagenstecher, ‘Gli Internati Militari Italiani nella memoria del dopoguerra’, in Barbara Bechelloni (ed.), Deportati e Internati: Racconti biografici di siciliani nei campi nazisti (Con un audio documentario di Andrea Giuseppini e Roman Herzog) (Rome: Mediascape/ANRP, 2009), 73–74. 11. Gerhard Schreiber, Die italienischen Militärinternierten im deutschen Macht­bereich 1943 bis 1945: Verraten–Verachtet–Vergessen (Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 1990); Gabriele Hammermann, Zwangsarbeit für den ‘Verbündeten’: Die Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen der italienischen Militärinternierten in Deutschland 1943–1945 (Tübingen: De Gruyter, 2002). 12. ‘Italian Military Internees (IMIs): Position Paper’, October 2000, IOM, Wühler files and Proposed Agenda Items for Meeting GFLC Staff with Foundation Board of Directors, 1 December 2000, ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. The foundation had thus taken up the same legal position as the Austrian Reconciliation Fund. 15. See the five-page memorandum, EVZ Archives, 501.12; also ibid., 660.00/10/2. 16. For a sample of fifty-two, and again of seventy-seven approved IMI claims, see the minutes of the twelfth meeting of the IOM Appeals Body, 17–18 February 2005, and the thirteenth meeting, 13–15 July 2005, IOM files. 17. As distinct from Ostarbeiter, who were thought to have been exclusively Ukrainian, Russian, Belarussian or Polish. 18. See record of meeting, 16 May 2001, IOM files. 19. IOM Assessment Guidelines, p. 33, IOM files. 20. Ibid., p. 19. 21. Ibid. 22. On the general regulations governing compensation for claimants who had been persecuted as children, see Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff, ‘Final Report on the Compensation Programs Carried Out by the “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” Foundation’, in Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff (eds) on behalf of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 123. 23. See Monika Kokalj-Kocevar. ‘“Mother, are the apples at home ripe yet?” Slovenian Forced and Slave Labourers during the Second World War’, in

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24.

25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld (eds.), Hitler’s Slaves: Life Stories of Forced Labourers in Nazi-occupied Europe (New York/ Oxford: Berghahn, 2010), 138–50. For some time, it had been assumed that as many as 260,000 Slovenians had been forcibly resettled. This number has now been revised. See Philipp Ther, The Dark Side of Nation-States: Ethnic Cleansing in Modern Europe (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2014), 99. See the sample of approximately thirty individual cases drawn from the database; also the assessment of the Slovenian appeals cases by the twelfth IOM Appeals Body meeting, 17–18 February 2005, IOM files. See the minutes of the meeting of the board of trustees of 3–4 December 2003, p. 12; see also a letter from the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future to the ‘victims’ association of abducted children’, 15 January 2004, EVZ Archives, 505.12/4. Jansen/Bräutigam to de Winter, 9 July 2002, EVZ Archives, 505.12. See the sample of approximately thirty positively and negatively assessed claims from Hungarian claimants taken from the IOM database. Translation of claim no. 1165767 from G.H. of Budapest, in IOM database, Sample Hungarian claimants. See the speech by Roma representative Zoni Weisz marking the commemoration day for victims of Nazism on 27 January 2011 in the German Bundestag at: http://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2011/33128906_kw04_ zoni_weisz/rede.html. See also Michelle Kelso, ‘Holocaust-Era Compensation and the Case of the Roma’, Studia Hebraica 8 (2008): 298–99. See also Alexander von Plato, ‘Reports from Germany on Forced and Slave Labour’, in von Plato, Leh and Thonfeld, Hitlers Slaves, 32. For this reason, the recent integration programmes developed especially for Roma, partly funded by the EU, including ‘How to be a Roma’ campaigns, address the collective history of deportation. On these, see the 2008 annual report of the Centrul National de Cultura al Romilor ‘Resurse si Consum Cultural in Communitatile de Romi: Studiu pilot in judentul Ilfov’, Bukarest, 2009. Kelso, ‘Holocaust-Era Compensation’, 330–31. Eyewitness interview, Alexe, 9 October 2009. Eyewitness interview, Mariora Tranka, 9 October 2009. See the minutes of a meeting in Geneva between the IOM and the foundation, 29 April 2004, IOM files, Appeals Body, no shelfmark. Kelso, ‘Holocaust-Era Compensation’, 329. See also the eyewitness interview, Wühler and Brill, 27–28 May 2008. Eyewitness interview, Alexe, 9 October 2009. Wolfgang Benz et al., Holocaust an der Peripherie: Judenpolitik und Judenmord in Rumänien und Transnistrien, 1940–1944 (Berlin: Metropol, 2009). On Transnistria, see Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid: Die nationalsozialistische Lösung der Zigeunerfrage (Hamburg: Christians, 1996); also David Kenrick and Grattan Puxon (eds), In the Shadow of the Swastika: The Gypsies during the Second World War (Hertfordshire: University

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43.

44. 45.

46.

of Hertfordshire Press, 1999); and especially Michelle Kelso, ‘Gypsy Deportations from Romania to Transnistria, 1942–44’, in ibid., 95–130. Later expert opinions by renowned historian and Roma and Transnistria specialist Paul Shapiro, director of the Centre for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, and Radu Ioanid, director of the International Archives Project in Washington, who undertook a ‘review of the claims of the deported Roma’ at the instigation of the IOM, came to the conclusion that the entire region of Transnistria should be regarded as ‘an historic extermination area’. See ‘Statement on Roma Claims from Romania’, 25 August 2003 as Annex II of IOM tranche 12, report, 28 August 2003, IOM files. EVZ board of directors to the partner organization, 13 June 2002, EVZ Archives 505.09. The simultaneous controversy over the ghetto pension law was a contributing factor in the dispute between the IOM, EVZ and the German Ministry of Finance over the definition of the term ‘ghetto’. The Ministry of Finance was seeking a way to deny the Roma grounds for entitlement to pension payments. On 20 June 2002, the Bundestag finally passed the ‘law for making pensions payable on account of employment in a ghetto’. Officially declared a special law, it served to close a gap in legislation and compensation practice. See Jürgen Zarusky (ed.), Ghettorenten: Entschädigungspolitik, Rechtsprechung und historische Forschung (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010). See (on the Danica camp) the special ruling by the foundation board of directors on ‘other places of confinement’, 5 February 2004; also, on the Mátészalka camp, see the ruling of 25 February 2004, EVZ Archives, 112.0015.

Bibliography Benz, Wolfgang, et al. Holocaust an der Peripherie: Judenpolitik und Judenmord in Rumänien und Transnistrien, 1940–1944, Berlin: Metropol, 2009. Ducasse-Rogier, Marianne. L’Organisation Internationale pour les Migrations 1951–2001, Geneva: IOM, 2002. Erker, Paul. ‘Compensating the Rest of the World: Das Entschädigungs­ management der International Organization for Migration’, in Constantin Goschler (ed.), in cooperation with José Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts, vol. 2: Transnationale Opferanwaltschaft: Das Auszahlungsprogramm und die internationalen Organisationen, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012, 80–196. Hammermann, Gabriele. Zwangsarbeit für den ‘Verbündeten’: Die Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen der italienischen Militärinternierten in Deutschland 1943– 1945, Tübingen: De Gruyter, 2002. Jansen, Michael and Günter Saathoff (eds) on behalf of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for

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Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Kelso, Michelle. ‘Gypsy Deportations from Romania to Transnistria, 1942–44’, in David Kenrick and Grattan Puxon (eds), In the Shadow of the Swastika: The Gypsies during the Second World War, Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press, 1999, 95–130. ———. ‘Hidden History: Perceptions of the Romani Holocaust in Romania Viewed Through Contemporary Race Relations’, The Anthropology of East Europe Review 25 (2007): 44–61. ———. ‘Holocaust-Era Compensation and the Case of the Roma’, Studia Hebraica 8 (2008): 298–334. Kenrick, David and Grattan Puxon (eds). In the Shadow of the Swastika: The Gypsies during the Second World War, Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press, 1999. Kokalj-Kocevar, Monika. ‘“Mother, are the apples at home ripe yet?” Slovenian Forced and Slave Labourers during the Second World War’, in Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld (eds), Hitler’s Slaves: Life Stories of Forced Labourers in Nazi-occupied Europe, New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2010, 138–50. Pagenstecher, Cord. ‘Gli Internati Militari Italiani nella memoria del dopoguerra’, in Barbara Bechelloni (ed.), Deportati e Internati: Racconti biografici di siciliani nei campi nazisti (Con un audio documentario di Andrea Giuseppini e Roman Herzog), Rome: Mediascape/ANRP, 2009, 73–81. Plato, Alexander von. ‘Reports from Germany on Forced and Slave Labour,’ in Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld (eds), Hitler’s Slaves: Life Stories of Forced Labourers in Nazi-occupied Europe, New York/ Oxford: Berghahn, 2010, 25–35, 138–50. Schreiber, Gerhard. Die italienischen Militärinternierten im deutschen Machtbereich 1943 bis 1945: Verraten–Verachtet–Vergessen, Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 1990. Ther, Philipp. The Dark Side of Nation-States: Ethnic Cleansing in Modern Europe, New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2014. Van der Auweraert, Peter. ‘The Practicalities of Forced Labour Compensation: The Work of the International Organization for Migration as one of the Partner Organizations under the German Foundation Law’, in Peer Zumbansen (ed.), Zwangsarbeit im Dritten Reich: Erinnerung und Verantwortung/NS-Forced Labor: Remembrance and Responsibility, Baden Baden: Nomos, 2002, 301–18. Wühler, Norbert. ‘German Compensation for World War II Slave and Forced Labour’, in Laurence Boisson de Chazournes et al. (eds), Crimes de l’histoire et reparations: Les reprises du droit et de la justice, Brussels: Bruylant, 2004, 163–75. Zarusky, Jürgen (ed.). Ghettorenten: Entschädigungspolitik, Rechtsprechung und historische Forschung, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010. Zimmermann, Michael. Rassenutopie und Genozid: Die nationalsozialistische Lösung der Zigeunerfrage, Hamburg: Christians, 1996.

5 The Forced Labourer Payments Programme in Poland Practices and Perceptions Michael G. Esch

In financial and technical terms, the payment programme to benefit former forced labourers in Poland was certainly a success: out of a national ceiling fund of €820 million, payments ranging from ZL 2823 (€673) to ZL 21,999 (€5.246) were afforded to 485,216 beneficiaries. Of the 590,689 applications submitted, 82 per cent were approved (as compared to 70.9 per cent by the Czech partner organization).1 Moreover, thanks to investment profits and residual funds effectuated by the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation (Fundacja Polsko-Niemieckie Pojednanie, FPNP), payments were up to 31 per cent higher than the German Foundation Law had originally stipulated. The option clause, established primarily in response to Polish demands,2 had proved crucial to the programme’s success: 74.1 per cent of Polish applicants were classified as eligible under this very device. Only 5.6 per cent of the eligible applicants in Poland fell into category A (slave labour in a concentration camp or similar place of confinement), while 20.3 per cent fell into category B (forced labour in industry).3 Thus Poland negotiated a framework on the basis of which a considerable number of Nazi victims, who would (again) have been excluded from compensation if the Germans had adhered to their original plans, received not only payments – however small – but also moral and legal recognition of the injustice they had suffered. Nevertheless, many of those affected and a considerable number of observers remained unsatisfied; some were disappointed or even shocked. The striking discrepancy between the good intentions behind the programme and its largely punctilious implementation on one side and the public’s negative perception of it on the other stemmed from

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two main factors that will be discussed in this chapter: firstly, the whole process was shaped by conflictual juxtapositions of discursive concepts about the manufacturing of justice. The conception that prevailed in the end consisted of a technically immaculate payment process, which was not always sufficient to satisfy personal and collective experiences of historical injustice. Secondly, the fact that the Polish partner organization was far more politicized than the foundations in other countries, including the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ itself:4 the chair of the FPNP was in fact a political office. The board was reappointed by each new government and consequently became the target of public and opposition party attacks. For this reason, its work was scrutinized and the fairness of the entire procedure regularly questioned by Polish commentators and the public media. Debates over appropriate forms of justice, legitimacy and ethics, systematically entangled with party politics, had a deep impact on the way in which Poland’s compensation claimants perceived, experienced and interpreted the process.

Poland’s Path to Negotiations and the Nature of the Polish Victim Discourse The inclusion of Poland in the payment programme for former forced labourers was the result of an extremely convoluted process, rife with setbacks and turnarounds.5 Its prehistory begins with the PolishGerman Treaty of Good Neighbourship signed on 17 June 1991, in which the two sides agreed on the establishment of a fund for Polish victims of Nazism. To this end, the German government pledged DM 500 million for distribution among ‘particularly aggrieved victims of Nazi persecution’ – and it did so explicitly for ‘humanitarian considerations’, not out of historical or legal responsibility. The distribution of the funds was delegated to a newly inaugurated foundation, the FPNP.6 At the same time, Germany deflected all Polish demands for actual compensation with regard to a Polish declaration from 1953: on 23 August, the People’s Republic of Poland had renounced all claims to reparations from the GDR. From the early 1990s on, members of Poland’s nascent victims’ associations increasingly called for an invalidation of this decision as ‘communist injustice’. But Poland’s pro-European governments dismissed these requests with reference to the ‘credibility of the Polish state as a subject of international law’.7 Ironically enough, it was a newly installed conservative government in Poland and a ‘red-green’ coalition government in Germany that in autumn 1998 finally proved

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responsive to Polish Nazi victims’ demands. The then chairman of the FPNP, Jacek Turczyński, played a key role in urging the conservative AWS – the majority party in government, of which he was a member8 – to support their cause. He argued that promoting forced labourer compensation did not necessarily conflict with modern Poland’s Europe-friendly, forward-looking attitude but complied entirely with the Third Republic’s self-image as a ‘victim of two dictatorships’.9 In March 1999, the Solidarność movement declared its support for the campaign for compensation of forced labourers.10 In autumn 1998, a newly formed delegation endeavoured to promote the status as victims of Nazism not only to Jewish, but also to Gentile Poles. It set about initiating class actions and incited Polish-American organizations to file petitions to American congressmen – right when German and American government agencies started preliminary talks about new compensation claims. The Polish delegation sought legal recourse not only in order to secure Poland a place at the negotiating table but also to broaden the public conception of Nazi victims, who, at least in the United States, were still widely identified exclusively with Jews.11 But the Polish delegation was also aware that to achieve anything it needed Jewish support. Hence it formed a precarious alliance with the Jewish Claims Conference and attempted to quieten American demands to reclaim Jewish property expropriated by the communists along with Gentile property after the war.12 In addition, it gained a Jewish member in Ludwik Krasucki as representative of the association of Jewish combatants and aggrieved parties in the Second World War (Stowarzyszenie Żydów Kombatantów i Poszkodowanych w II Wojnie Światowej, SŻKP).13 For similar strategic reasons, i.e. legitimizing Polish claims by emphasizing the existence of Jews among the Polish victims, the Polish delegation obtained responsibility for Jewish victims in Poland from the JCC.14 Qualitative as well as quantitative issues shaped the debate over recognition of Polish victims of Nazism. The Polish side argued that the Poles were victims of genocide and therefore ranked close to Jews in the victim hierarchy.15 It thus claimed entitlement to an overall amount of compensation equal to those for Jewish victims16. But the ceiling funds were negotiated on the basis of estimated total numbers of payment recipients; the Polish side was obliged to prove that it represented a sufficiently big number of potential beneficiaries. Since the programme was initially intended to compensate only forced labour in the private industry, while more than two thirds of the 1.9 million surviving Polish forced labourers had been deployed in agriculture,17 the Polish delegation called for separate funds from the German government to

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compensate the latter.18 One major issue was that agricultural workers were not recognized as Nazi victims by the German side:19 they fulfilled – in the Polish perspective – the German requirements in terms of quantity, but lacked – in the German perspective – the quality of forced labour. There was a second problem: up to this point, the Polish strategy, like that of the other eastern and east central European delegations, had rested upon a concept of historical, restorative justice20 – redress was sought for injustice that had happened in the past. According to this rationale, the Polish victims’ associations insisted that to be ‘just’, the compensation had to reflect the beneficiaries’ level of suffering, i.e. the nature and duration of the forced labour performed.21 In October 1999, the Association of Poles who Suffered under the Third Reich (Stowarzyszenie Polaków Kombatantów Poszkodowanych III Rzeszy, SPP) – Poland’s largest (and youngest) victims’ association – refused humanitarian assistance for Nazi victims on the grounds that it would not only entail “an element of mercy” on the German side, but also a humiliation of those who suffered the grievances’.22 In their view, the announced ‘lump-sum payments’ would only be acceptable if the payments were oriented to estimations of the withheld wages.23 To meet this viewpoint, the Polish delegation insisted on establishing the criteria for entitlement before it came to the monetary amounts. It underlined the distinction between compensation, which required the calculation of the total amount according to the number of entitled parties, and assistance, where the rate of individual payments could be determined according to the funds available. Though consistent with the views of Polish victims’ organizations, the Polish standpoint was very soon marginalized. In late 1999, Eizenstat urged the Poles to fall into line with the other delegations and to agree to a total endowment of DM 10 billion. His main argument was the advanced age of those affected: ‘We must have all the courage to grasp it, rather than lose an historic opportunity to provide real benefits to Holocaust victims in their lifetime because of indecision or unsubstantiated hope that more can be wrung from the German side, or that a better deal can be found through litigation.’24 This quote not only reveals that the US State Department was still not at ease with extending the groups of Nazi victims – Poland and the other eastern European countries were precisely pursuing the recognition of non-Jewish forced labourers.25 It also indicates a shift in the conceptualization of justice, using the advanced age of those victims not as grounds for scandalizing the German failures concerning Wiedergutmachung but as an argument against those who for so many years had demanded historic and legal justice: the insistence on

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true justice thus threatened to prevent the victims from ever getting anything. On 3 December 1999, the eastern European delegations agreed to a total endowment of DM 12 billion, 88.39 per cent of which was to be distributed among former forced labourers. Slave labourers (i.e. labourers in concentration camps) were to get twice the amount for forced labourers, and Poland was apportioned about the same total amount as the JCC.26 Furthermore, the Poles demanded that ‘the criteria of deportation’27 was to be the key benchmark for defining applicants in category B (forced labour), which would have enabled them to include agricultural forced labourers.28 The German side refused this, but Eizenstat assured the Poles that ‘the foundation will be broad enough to include agri[cultural] workers’.29 This somewhat fuzzy ‘broadness’ was legally constructed via the introduction of the ‘option clause’, which authorized all partner organizations to include additional victim groups in the programme, after due consultation with the German foundation.30 Eventually, the Polish side agreed to a total fund of DM 10 billion, having shifted its focus from the achievement of historical redress in the strict sense to claimants’ contemporary needs and the general rapprochement of Poles and Jews concerning the status of victims of Nazism.

The Option Clause, National History Policy and Victims’ Interests With the enactment of the Foundation Law, the discursive and semantic frame of the programme shifted again. Biographies and applications now had to be translated into the legal code of the Foundation Law and into the terms of the partnership agreement. These two legislative documents, moreover, cemented the asymmetry of the two sides’ relationship: German law ultimately overrode Polish law (for example, when it came to recognizing places of confinement), and the German foundation functioned as a supervisory authority that could limit the Polish foundation’s scope of action and interpretation. But as the following years showed, the Polish partner organization was on multiple occasions able to gain the moral high ground by rallying public support and thus to achieve amendments in favour of particular victim groups. One of the first issues debated in the public arena was the possibility of early payments to the oldest surviving Nazi victims. As the negotiations for the partnership agreement drew on in mid-November 2000 and with Christmas approaching, Turczyński – now a member of

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the foundation’s advisory board – suggested advance payments to the oldest victims without waiting for the negotiations to be concluded and legal conditions (as the establishment of legal protection against further claims by the Bundestag) fulfilled. His proposal was immediately taken up by the press, especially the left-liberal daily Gazeta Wyborcza. The FPNP and victims’ associations, however, rejected the idea as it would further transform the payments into a sort of social welfare programme.31 The German foundation declared that it would give no guarantee whatsoever that advance payments by the FPNP would be reimbursed. As the conflict persisted, the Gazeta Wyborcza accused the FPNP – now led by young conservative Bartosz Jałowiecki – of acting heartlessly towards former Nazi victims.32 While the German foundation suspected that the FPNP tried to distinguish itself from the German ‘(foundation) bureaucracy’, it nevertheless considered it advisable to ‘offer unconditional support’33 in view of the considerable media pressure the Polish foundation was now under. Eventually the matter was resolved with the FPNP following a German suggestion to issue advance payments from its own resources, which were to be reimbursed if the recipients were later found eligible in the new programme.34 This particular constellation of political press, foundations and victims’ associations also determined debates about the inclusion or exclusion of further groups of victim groups via the option clause. Disputes in this field regularly touched on delicate issues of domestic and memory politics, and illuminated the irreconcilability of (or at least considerable frictions between) historical justice, social justice and technical procedural properness. For instance, it was hardly possible to harmonize the exclusion of prisoners of war from the programme with Poland’s pride in the combatant status that the Germans had attributed to participants in the Warsaw Uprising, a decision that had led to their internment in POW camps instead of concentration camps.35 The FPNP argued that although prisoner-of-war status according to the letter of the law indeed did not entitle applicants to compensation, neither did it exclude them categorically: had a POW for example been forced to perform labour in the arms industry in violation of international law, he should be entitled to compensation.36 But as the German side feared the return of debates over Italian Military Internees, Soviet POWs and German expellees, the German foundation and ministries ruled that the paragraph was to be interpreted as an ‘exclusion clause’.37 The FPNP subsequently suggested establishing a device by which the applicants in question would be eligible if they had been forcibly assigned civilian prisoner status.38 While an internal document shows

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that the German foundation tended to approve of this argument,39 it took some nine months to announce a partial agreement that remained far behind initial expectations.40 The Armia Krajowa (Home Army) veterans remained dissatisfied. In September 2002, a representative of their association called for payments to the last four hundred survivors of the uprising as a gesture ‘with particular signal effect’.41 The Finance Ministry quickly dismissed the initiative, using the dubious argument that the renouncement of the POW status for these insurgents had violated international law and was therefore not valid.42 Consequently, the FPNP took matters into its own hands, announcing in spring 2003 that it would pay certain groups of POWs ZL 1,400 (approximately €350) from its ‘own funds’.43 In late October 2003, a further resolution granted payments to circa 3,500 POWs who had been deployed in arms-relevant industries in violation of the Geneva Convention. Hans Koschnick, Germany’s representative on the FPNP board of trustees, ‘expressed legal concerns but stressed that he could comprehend the decision on moral grounds (constructive abstention)’.44 A similar debate arose over underage forced labourers. Most teenage forced labourers were not eligible for compensation because they had not been deported, but deployed in their hometowns. Despite of a large-scale press debate that drew on morality and ethics as well as on party politics, it was not before late 2003 that non-deported former children were integrated into the programme provided they had been deployed in industrial workplaces of their hometowns.45 Minors who had been deported with their parents would henceforth also be entitled to payments even if they had no proof of having performed forced labour themselves.46 The FPNP thus watered down two principles, which the Polish side had only recently insisted on: firstly, the criteria of deportation and, secondly, aligning payments to the actual work performed.47 In this, it not only yielded to the influence of members of the victims’ associations on the foundation board and to the absorption of the compensation practice into medial constructions of the national master narrative. Also, the FPNP staff who consisted predominantly of young, emphatic idealists, proved itself unwilling – or unable – to simply ignore the fates of old people, victims of the Nazi forced labour system, whose personal experiences would not easily satisfy the Foundation Law’s criteria. However, this empathy and commitment further contributed to the transformation of the payments into humanitarian assistance, even if it were provided out of a sense of historical and generational responsibility – something the victims’ associations had always wanted to avoid. Nevertheless, thanks to this shift and the cooperative good will of the German foundation, even victim groups

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who until then had been completely out of the picture were eventually included in the programme and integrated into the Polish master narrative.

The Conversion Debacle and Relations between the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and FPNP Poland was the only country participating in the programme to get its share of the fund transferred in its own national currency. The arrangement was considered a major achievement of the FPNP and had a decisive and highly ambivalent impact on the public perception of the programme in Poland. The idea behind the Polish scheme was indeed tempting: administrative costs of the FPNP would be covered by income from interest rate differentials between DM and złoty accounts and a high interest rate on current balances. The FPNP had already proceeded in a similar way in the 1990s, when it had managed to boost the paid amounts to 130 per cent of the originally allocated sums.48 However, some of the funds had been invested in bad banks, which when the latter crashed in 1992 caused a scandal which re-erupted in early 2001, when proceedings against the then chairman of the FPNP, Bronisław Wilk, were opened.49 Nevertheless, the promise of increasing the amount of money available to the victims was too good to renounce. The German side was not as enthusiastic, as this would mean a certain autonomization of the Poles. Hence, in early January 2001, German embassy counsellor Thomas Neisinger suggested placing the interest accrued over a ‘reasonable period of time’ at the disposal of the FPNP on the proviso that the latter accounted for the spending of these revenues.50 Both foundations agreed on a limited interest period of ten days, and the FPNP accepted financial auditing by the German side. The funds were to be converted into złoty by a consortium led by the Deutsche Bank; the intended procedure should guarantee ‘security (no speculation); transparency; “fairness”; publicity-effectiveness; market influence; expectable exchange rates’.51 In addition, one of the bank’s finance experts, Jan Dreher, was commissioned to assist the German foundation. On 1 June 2001, the chairman of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, Michael Jansen, instructed Dreher to proceed with converting the entire first rate on the basis of an oral agreement made with Jałowiecki.52 A few days later, the FPNP protested that the German side had calculated an unprecedentedly low exchange rate and that there had been no previous consultation on the

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terms of the conversion, as had been stipulated in the partnership contract.53 Soon afterwards, complaints were voiced that the German banks had imposed charges triple the usual rate.54 A few days after that, the złoty depreciated sharply relative to the euro due to the collapse of the dollar caused by the banking crisis in Argentina.55 As a consequence, the beneficiaries of the payment programme stood to receive far less money than they would have got at the original day’s rate. The conversion arrangement, which should have become the FPNP’s masterpiece, turned rapidly into a public debacle:56 the FPNPs solo run concerning the conversion of funds had aimed to make the foundation pay out the largest amounts of compensation; now it threatened to lead to the exact opposite. Again, various competing concepts of justice were negotiated in the ensuing dispute, and again the principle of procedural justice prevailed. The Polish side insisted that the Germans had violated the partnership contract, where it had been stipulated that the exchange rate was to be brokered for each instalment.57 The German side countered by pointing out that the whole conversion scheme had been a Polish idea,58 and insisted that the procedure followed by the consortium had been arranged with chairman Jałowiecki on 30 May.59 Internally the German foundation considered that the whole agitation was about ‘missed speculative profit’ rather than about actual losses.60 This was not entirely false, but it did not take into account that the FPNP’s reputation now relied on these profits: as in the case of the Wilks trial one year before, scandalizing media coverage left many affected Nazi victims under the impression of having been cheated. Interestingly, the culprits were sought on the Polish side by the government-critical, leftliberal newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, while conservative newspapers like the Życie Warszawy and the post-communist Trybuna held the Germans responsible.61 The conversion debacle jeopardized the public image of the payment programme as a morally, ethically and technically faultless – hence fair and just – procedure. For this reason, both sides were keen to overcome it as swiftly as possible. However, each side’s suggestions for solving the predicament were based on diverging concepts of how justice was to be served. While the German side pressed for a joint gesture of goodwill to make amends for a misfortune without perpetrators, the FPNP felt obliged to name and prove the guilt of the Germans in order to deflect growing criticisms of its own actions and their outcome. A Polish parliamentary investigative commission concluded in mid-August that both sides were to blame.62 As the debacle resulted in increasing tensions in German-Polish relations, German Chancellor

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Schröder and Polish Prime Minister Buzek set a ten-day ultimatum to resolve the matter.63 Three days later, Jałowiecki was dismissed from his post on the grounds that he had failed to adequately prepare the partnership contract and had deferred proper consultation about the conversion agreement.64 His dismissal was to clear the way for a ‘quick gesture before the elections’ in Poland;65 it was not mirrored by dismissals on the German side. The victims’ associations were not satisfied. According to them, Jałowiecki had been ‘the first and only foundation chairman to represent the victims’ interests in the long term and to demonstrate the necessary firmness and tenacity in dealing with the Germans’.66 The dispute continued to smoulder. Just a few weeks later, on 28 August, Neisinger and Jansen lamented an increasing tendency to resist German demands on the part of the FPNP’s interim chairman, Krochmal.67 Meanwhile, in Germany matters were complicated by a motion by Lothar Evers, founding member of the Foundation Initiative’s board of trustees and founder and manager of an NGO committed to helping former forced labourers. Evers urged the trustees to press charges of fraud against the Foundation Initiative’s directors, which was rejected.68 Tensions were not eased until the FPNP finally desisted from trying to uncover the exact circumstances of the conversion debacle and renounced its claim to restoring justice in a strict, historical and legal sense. On 25 October, the FPNP chair was handed to Jerzy Sułek, who Ludwik Krasucki hoped would ‘steer the ship into calmer waters’.69 Still it took until 11 December 2001 to present at least ‘a statement of intent on the elements of an agreement’ between the German foundation and the FPNP. The parties agreed on a one-off supplementary payment using interest gains from both sides. These additional payments were to be issued in early 2002 to recipients of the first five paid tranches and after completion of the first instalment to all others.70 But it was not until 21 December that the foundations announced a settlement:71 the German foundation agreed to pay DM 100 million from the interest accrued while the FPNP funds were still on German accounts. At the same time, the Polish side consented to contribute DM 10 million of expected residual funds from an estimated ten per cent of claims that would be rejected.72 Thus the German foundation absorbed the lion’s share of the costs by virtually using Polish money; the Polish share was drawn from funds that could only ever have been used for supplementary payments. The conversion debacle had a lasting impact on the public perception of the payment programme as a whole, especially in Poland.

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The press was instrumental in steering the course of the debate and emerged as a key agency defining the ethics and significance of the payment programme while creating moral panics mostly according to their preferences in the field of domestic party politics: normally, scandal and delegitimization were operated first and foremost by newspapers critical of the respective government in charge. Moreover, the basic cornerstones of the relationship between the two foundations were renegotiated in this process, which also denominated the transition from perpetrator-victim-dichotomy to a new joint Polish-German godparenthood over victims of totalitarianism.73 While the two parties perceived each other with some (renewed) mistrust, the debacle at the same time doomed them to bond in a new, shared obligation to ensure that the payment programme became a success.

Scandals and Routine The payment process was a symbolically charged public act; its success or failure was measured via its presentation and representation in the media. Also its technical implementation relied heavily on the involvement of the media, who served as an important tool not only for rallying support for compensation demands, but also for publicizing the payment programme and the procedures that the former victims had to follow.74 The FPNP worked in close cooperation with regional and local newspapers.75 The tabloid newspaper Fakt ran an occasional column in 2003 and 2004 under the title ‘Nie daj się! Fakt Ci pomoże!’ (‘Don’t give up! Fakt will help!’) that published cases in which the newspaper had intervened on behalf of individual applicants. It was coverage such as this, of which the FPNP very much approved,76 that led most applicants to regard the FPNP and not the German foundation as the donor institution that granted – or refused – payments.77 The media representation of the FPNP as a direct counterpart rather than an intermediary link to the German foundation, as it was conveyed in the press, was reinforced by scandals like the one described above. In April 2003, the Polish News Bulletin and the liberal-conservative daily Rzeczpospolita reported that the Polish audit court, the Najwyższa Izba Kontrolna (NIK), considered bonuses that the FPNP board had paid itself in the years 1998 to 2000 illegal.78 The FPNP quickly pointed out that the accusations were not connected with the foundation’s current activities.79 Nevertheless, the FPNP removed Jan Parys, as one of the accused still associated with the foundation, from its board and invited Parys and Turczyński, then chairman, to voluntarily pay back

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the money wrongfully taken.80 In addition, a ruling to pay a thirteenth month’s salary and quarterly bonuses was revoked.81 Later that same year, a television report broadcast on 3 November implied that the FPNP kept compensation payments purposefully low in order to finance generous bonuses it still granted to its board members.82 Again in December 2005 complaints were voiced about bonuses which the Treasury had authorized nine months before at the request of director Sułek.83 Although they were entirely legal and the money had not strictly speaking been taken from funds intended to compensate the Nazi victims, but from interest or residual funds, publicized opinion did not appreciate these practices. When the victims’ associations spoke out in support of Sułek, they, too, came into the firing line of the Rzeczpospolita, who claimed that the Polish Union of Nazi Victims (Polska Unia Ofiar Nazizmu, PUON) consisted predominantly of associations that were represented on the FPNP’s board of trustees and could rely on preferential treatment whenever funds were allocated.84 Charges of unethical and dishonest conduct against Sułek were regularly combined with accusations that he had only acquired his position by means of post-communist old boys’ networks, and that he had rendered himself irremovable by taking posts at both the FPNP and PUON. These charges were taken all the more seriously when the conservative party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS), which had pledged to clear Polish politics of post-communist corruption and ‘finally get rid of the “old cadres”’,85 assumed government in late 2005. Just as the leftliberal press had targeted the young conservative Jałowiecki several years before, the right-liberal press and conservatives now fired polemics against the alleged former communist Sułek. The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, too, internally criticized the ‘conduct of the Polish foundation with regard to bonuses and the accumulation of offices’ and suspected ‘irregularities’ in dealing with the residual funds. Günter Saathoff complained that Sułek had committed an ‘unfriendly act’ by referring to the salaries of the German foundation’s board of directors to justify the FPNP’s bonuses. But he also stressed that, with regard to the programme’s implementation and realization, the German foundation had no complaints about the FPNP and was highly satisfied with the cooperation.86 Nevertheless, in early January 2006, Sułek was dismissed along with the rest of the board and replaced by PiS members Marian Muszyński and Przemysław Sypniewski.87 Surprisingly, the routine work of claims processing and the day-today cooperation between Polish staff and German supervisors went off untroubled by such scandals. It was primarily the high-profile players

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within the foundations, i.e. the (German and Polish) board members, most of whom were party officials and/or professional diplomats, who became embroiled in scandals and disputes. On the level of processing and control, however, it was mostly students and young graduates that came together, many of whom were driven by a strong sense of humanitarian and (especially on the Polish side) intergenerational responsibility. By virtue of these shared motivations, initial mistrust and confusion over the conduct of the German supervisory teams soon dissipated, leaving a cooperative working environment which the moral panics surrounding the programme could not disrupt.88 Polish claims processing took place in several stages, which attempted to reconcile the German side’s expectations of procedural justice with the subjectivities and experiences of the applicants. The FPNP personnel were initially overwhelmed when they started accepting applications in 2001. Dariusz Pawłoś, an office staff member who would later become chairman, remembered masses of elderly applicants freezing in the cold, announcements being made via megaphone and generally ‘inhuman conditions’ due to inappropriate facilities.89 To remedy this situation, ground-floor premises were hired in addition to the old offices on the second floor of the Treasury building. Since it soon became clear that many applicants, all of whom were elderly and many of whom were living alone, tended to make use of the personal submission of their applications as an opportunity to finally talk about their experiences as well as about their current situations, and to lessen the emotional strain this placed on the office staff, each member was assigned to one of three fields of responsibility – personal consultation, telephone assistance or written correspondence – and rotated at regular intervals.90 Some applicants remained in close contact with the foundation for several years, taking part in visiting programmes organized by German local authorities, or offering their assistance as eyewitnesses to Polish schools and similar institutions.91 The applications were reviewed by a supervisory commission which classified them into the internal categories or conducted additional research in the FPNP’s archive.92 The commission, and occasionally a nominally independent appeals body within the FPNP, sorted the applications into the official payment categories and compiled lists of up to 100,000 applicants. Regular reviews were carried out on the basis of these lists. It was in this procedure that the exact criteria for approving and classifying applications were gradually defined, in an ongoing process of learning and negotiating. Committed specialists in Slavic studies from Germany worked side by side with German philologists and historians from Poland, many of whom had expert knowledge

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of occupation history.93 Each side’s working methods complied with their respective concepts of justice: the Polish foundation staff built on their national history narrative, while the Germans acted on social commitment linked with their function of controlling agency. It was inside these competing and complementary conceptualizations that both sides prided themselves on achieving concessions for the benefit of the victims: while the German supervisory teams frequently urged the Polish staff, if in doubt, to place individual applicants into higher eligibility categories,94 the Polish side made great efforts towards taking new victim groups into the payment programme.95 But even on the Polish side, the payment programme ultimately transformed into an enterprise of social, humanitarian concern: ‘That was the largest programme of relief payments in the world; I regard it as something perfectly extraordinary, and I am happy to have been able to take part in it because it was a real help to this group of people.’96 In the end, the financial aspect of the Wiedergutmachung claimed far more time and ranked far more highly in the foundation staff’s self-perception than aspects of history or identity politics.

Perceptions and Reactions According to the FPNP staff, the same was true for most beneficiaries of the programme. Media coverage of the negotiations from 1998 to 2000 had focused on the financial aspect and had above all raised hopes of material assistance for those in need. As far as we learn from the records of the foundations, most notably the ‘ex post verification’ collected after the first and second payments, the ‘compensation’ was most often used to pay for medical treatment. At least in these cases, the payments served as the symbolically charged humanitarian gesture the German side had intended. But some former forced labourers proceeded differently: one beneficiary declared he had used the money to surprise friends visiting from Paris with an ‘entertaining gesture of hospitableness, like a sheikh’. Some declared they had bought gifts for family members or realized long-held dreams. These cases show that at least some Nazi victims were willing to and capable of interpreting and using the payments entirely on their own terms, although most of them spent the money on medications or on gifts for their relatives. The way the beneficiaries spent the money obviously did not depend on whether they perceived these payments as just or unjust.97 The ex post verification forms provided room for general remarks. Here, some phrased complaints about the FPNP, often based on

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negative press coverage, combined with national stereotypes and selfloathing as members of the Polish nation: at times articles were cited about the bonus payments that had expressed the opinion that Poland was ‘still the land of thieves and swindlers’. In some cases, disappointment about the FPNP encouraged a consideration of the German foundation as guardian of the cheated and humiliated – a tendency that was certainly fostered by the way in which the verification was initiated: all beneficiaries selected for the verification received the forms together with a personal letter from the chairman of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’.98 As the German side thus presented itself as a supervisory authority, it quite possibly consolidated the Polish, media-driven tendency to embed scandals surrounding the FPNP in a general discourse about corruption in Poland’s ruling class. Some detailed letters addressed to board chairman Michael Jansen or member of board of directors Hans-Otto Bräutigam also point to this. Other former forced labourers were for their part dissatisfied with the methods of the German foundation, or with the form and size of the compensatory gesture it provided. Many referred to the conversion debacle and expressed feelings of having been cheated by the German foundation, the banks or the FPNP. Many beneficiaries’ responses expressed embitterment at having ‘received too little for five years of forced labour’. Some complained that the payments were ‘inappropriate in relation to the loss of [their] childhood and health’ or even regarded them as ‘insulting’. But overall, positive comments were just as frequent as complaints (seventy of each). While most of the former were no more than general expressions of gratitude, possibly made out of sheer politeness, they indicated that the authors were at the very least not upset or angered. In fewer cases, beneficiaries explicitly praised the work of the FPNP or the German foundation, or the payment programme on the whole. Some beneficiaries even stressed the improvement in German-Polish relations. Unlike many ‘ordinary’ applicants, representatives of the victims’ associations always stressed that the payments did not represent real redress. The extent to which these public actors viewed the payment programme as a success therefore depended largely on whether they would rather locate themselves in the field of history policy or be involved in fostering European unity.99 Stefan Kozłowski, a leading member of the Association of Former Political Prisoners (Polski Związek Byłych Więźniów Politycznych, PZBWP) emphasized the Poles’ multiple victim status in our interview. He regarded himself and his association – former members of the Polish armed underground forces – as victims of both communists and Nazis who had hitherto received nothing, and

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additionally as victims of Jewish ingratitude. To him, it was unacceptable that the duration of former prisoners’ confinement – forced labourers had no part in his narrative – remained irrelevant to the rate of payments. He considered the German foundation’s conduct as ‘unjust’ and even ‘villainous’.100 In contrast, former journalist Witold Dobski took a completely different approach: he had joined the SPP to shift its focus away from history-related compensation claims and to help make ‘rapprochement the strategic goal’ of the association.101 Like Poland’s Europe-oriented factions, Dobski opposed focusing too rigidly on the past, even when it came to personal memory: ‘But it won’t do that some fellow is guided only by his own, individual truth, the truth of his milieu or the Polish truth. Because now, after so many decades, being a member of the European Union, we should act as Europeans in some way and not always talk about the same old things.’102 Although Dobski, too, rejected the idea that the German foundation’s payments had anything to do with redress, he highlighted and acknowledged their material and social impact. Both Kozłowski and Dobski underlined the need to gain international recognition for the suffering of the Poles as a nation and as individuals. However, only Dobski felt that this recognition had been satisfactorily achieved through the programme. It should be noted that Kozłowski’s association, the PZBWP, had opposed the inclusion of agricultural forced labourers in the programme as a slight to their own suffering early during the negotiations, while Dobski adhered to an organization that had actually pooled and represented the interests of those ‘forgotten victims’. To some of those who had previously had a crucial influence on public memory, witnessing the focus of national discourse shift from heroes to victims seems to have been degrading and a defeat in the ‘competition among the victims’.

Conclusion: Is the Truth Always Concrete? Justice is a question of context: of political and ethical semantics, and of the cognitive, historical, social and cultural frames of reference in which it is sought. Its fabrication is neither random nor unambiguous, nor fixed once and for all. Polish actors were forced to abandon demands for just restitution, shifting the focus from history and identity politics to social and humanitarian issues. Although concerns of history and identity continued to play a role, they ceased to determine the way justice was to be achieved. They formed an abstract background – and even posed certain obstacles – to the payment process. So how did a

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more concrete, present-day-oriented concept of justice come to prevail over the more abstract, history-focused concept? After all, it was the abstraction – historical injustice hitherto not compensated – that had served as the starting point for the entire process. In the case of Poland, we can name three discernible factors: firstly, we have seen the structural disparity between the foundations. The German Foundation Law obliged the Polish side to acknowledge and follow German laws, subordinating the Polish partner to the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and to the German Treasury. This power relation was echoed at government level: Poland relied on Germany’s support to gain swift entry into the EU and had less scope for action and influence than its neighbour to the west. A second factor was the payment programme’s high public and media profile and the role of the press. Various aspects of the process and its political significance could be charged with historical (e.g. the Warsaw Uprising) or social (e.g. advance payments) meaning, or be scandalized with regard to their technical implementation (e.g. board members’ bonuses). More often than not, this scandalizing occurred mostly according to party political orientations of the respective media. Every scandal, however, assessed the legitimacy and ethics of the payments in a way that placed present sufferings of the aging Nazi victims firmly over historical and administrative categories. Additionally, the ubiquitous debate on old boy networks and corruption in Poland brought a distinct advantage for the German side: the FPNP would – as a Polish institution – always be considered more susceptible to corruption than the ever proper and orderly Germans. The discursive and relational arena, the inclined plane on which the payments to former forced labourers were organized and implemented, was largely determined by the respective actors’ positions of power and economic strength, tending to reduce the applicants to mere objects of an administrative process. In a final analysis, the more the individual applicant absorbed the arguments advanced in the public arena, especially the confrontational press coverage, and the more he/she saw him- or herself as involved in this public arena, the deeper the dissatisfaction with the entire process was.103 But obviously the payment programme in Poland was not completely determined by this aspect. There was room for empathy for the staff members processing the claims as well as for individual, unpublic self-willed actions and interpretations of the former forced labourers. And even the impact of the public scandals was not completely unambiguous. On one hand, occasional scandalizing of categorial injustice forwarded by the media helped to include hitherto neglected victim groups. On the other, marketing and

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politicization of the FPNP’s alleged misconducts increased the disappointment and frustration of many victims with the programme and with history. But this surely did not prevent that many Polish former forced labourers from receiving a form of gratifying recognition, albeit inadequate and belated. Michael Esch is Lecturer in Comparative Social and Cultural History at Leipzig University, researcher at the GWZO – Leibniz-Institut für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa and a freelance historian. As an expert on Polish and eastern European contemporary history he has most recently published Parallele Gesellschaften und soziale Räume: Osteuropäische Einwanderer in Paris 1880–1940 (Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 2012); Die Stadt als Spielfeld: Raumbegriffe, Raumnutzungen, Raumdeutungen polnischer Hooligans (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016).

Notes 1. See Jerzy Sułek, ‘Niemiecka pomoc humanitarna i finansowa w latach 1991–2004 dla poszkodowanych przez III Rzeszę w Polsce, Problemy polityczne i prawne’, in Sławomir Dębski and Witold M. Góralski (eds), Problem reparacji, odszkodowań i świadczeń w stosunkach polsko-niemieckich 1944–2004, vol. 1 (Warsaw: Polski Inst. Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2004), 382–83. See also EVZ Archives, 661.14. On the Czech Republic, see Stephanie Zloch in the present book. 2. On the negotiation process and its outcome, see Benno Nietzel in the ­present book. 3. Own calculations based on information from the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ database. 4. On the history and (critical) perception of the payment procedure and its development, see Henning Borggräfe in the present book. 5. For a more detailed account, see Michael Esch, ‘Durchsetzung, Praxis und Deutung der Auszahlungen an ehemalige Zwangsarbeiterinnen und Zwangsarbeiter in Polen, 1998 bis 2006’, in Constantin Goschler (ed.), in cooperation with José Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts: Die Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ und ihre Partnerorganisationen, vol. 3: Nationale Selbstbilder, Opferdiskurse und Verwaltungshandeln: Das Auszahlungsprogramm in Ostmitteleuropa (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 77–157. 6. Dębski and Góralski (eds), Problem reparacji, vol. 1, 537–38. 7. Kierski to Geremek, 17 November 1997, FPNP Archives, P1; Kaczorowski to Kierski, 13 February 1998, ibid.; see also Jan Sandorski, ‘Zrzeczenie się w 1953 r. przez Polskę reparcji wobec Niemiec w świetle prawa

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międzynarodowego’, in Dębski and Góralski, Problem reparacji, vol. 1, 123–56. 8. The AWS (Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność, Solidarity Electoral Action) was a coalition of several centre-right parties and groupings that existed from 1996 to 2001. It formed the government from 1997 to 2001 together with the liberal democratic UW (Unia Wolności, Freedom Union) under Jerzy Buzek. 9. Jacek Turczyński, Cień wojny i PRL-u, undated (probably January 1999), FPNP Archives, P2. A similar standpoint is conveyed by Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, ‘Deutschland und das Problem der Nachkriegsentschädigung für Polen’, in Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds), Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa 1945–2000 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), 718–20. 10. Open letter to German management, 2 March 1999, signed Marian Krzaklewski, FPNP Archives, P10; speech by Krzaklewski at the conference Odpowiedzialniość za przezłość – myślenie o przyszłości, Katowice, 24 March 1999, FPNP Archives, P4. 11. Jean-Michel Chaumont, La concurrence des victimes: Génocide, identité, reconnaissance, (Paris: La Découverte, 2010); Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston, MA/New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998). 12. Letter from fifty-eight congressmen to Płażyński, 13 October 1999, forwarded 20 October 1999 by Winid, FPNP Archives, P10; Jerzy Kranz, ‘Rokowania wielostronne z Niemcami – od końca 1998 r. do 17 lipca 2000 r.’, in Barcz, Jałowiecki and Kranz, Między pamięcią, 23. 13. Interview with Tomasz Miedziński, 6 March 2009, approximately 01:06:27–01:06:36. 14. Kwestie do omówienia na spotkaniach ze środowiskami żydowskimi i w Departamencie Stanu, undated [probably 9 July 1999], FPNP Archives, P7; Poniedzialek Spotkanie z Israelem Singerem, undated [9 July 1999], ibid.; Sesja Plenarna, 7 October 1999 (notes), FPNP Archives, P10. 15. Proposed timetable for Polish participation in legal action for offenses committed in violation of international law during Second World War, 14 January1999, undated, p. 1, FPNP Archives, P1. 16. Non-paper w/s inicjatywy przedsiębiorstw niemieckich powołania funduszu i fundacji, które mają finansować świadczenia związane w szczeglólności z pracą przymusową w Niemczech w okresie II wojny światowej, a także do zamiaru utworzenia przez Bundestag fundacji federalnej, 3 February 1999, FPNP Archives, P4. 17. On these figures, see Mark Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im besetzten Europa 1938–1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001), 222–25. See also Czesław Łuczak, Praca przymusowa Polaków w III Rzeszy (Warsaw: Fundacja Polsko-Niemieckie Pojednanie, 1999). 18. Non-paper w/s inicjatywy przedsiębiorstw niemieckich (as footnote 16). 19. Zarys stanowiska rządu w sprawie odszkodowań dla ofiar III Rzeszy, 8 March 1999, signed by Jałowiecki, FPNP Archives, P4; Notatka ze spotkań w sprawie odszkodowań dla ofiar pracy niewolniczej I przymusowej,

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które obyły [!] się w Waszyngtonie w dniach 6–7 October 1999 r., draft, 11 October 1999, unsigned, FPNP Archives, P10. 20. On concepts of justice in compensation debates after 1945, see John Torpey, Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). 21. Notatka ze spotkania Ministra Walendziaka z Ministrem Bodo Hombachem … w Bonn w dniu 28 January 1999 r., confidential, 1 February 1999, verified by Nowakowski and signed by Jałowiecki, FPNP Archives, P4. 22. Podsiadło to Buzek, 27 October 1999, with attachment: Dopuszczalne granice kompromisu w sprawie odszkodowań, FPNP Archives, P10. 23. Dopuszczalne granice kompromisu (as footnote 22), 3–4. 24. Handzlik to Jałowiecki, 1 December 1999, attachment: statement by Eizenstat, undated, unsigned, FPNP Archives, P12. 25. Interview with Miedziński, approximately 00:16:02–00:17:00. 26. ‘Agreement of Central Eastern European Delegations Regarding the German Joint Public and Private Foundation’, 3 December 1999, unsigned, FPNP Archives, P12; Note Permal od Stańczyka, undated, unsigned, ibid. 27. Note Permal od Stańczyka, (as footnote 26). 28. Handwritten records, partly dated 2–3 December 1999, several authors, FPNP Archives, P12. 29. Handwritten notes: Spotkanie z Eizenstatem, 16 December 1999, p. 1, FPNP Archives, P12. 30. ‘The Law on the Creation of a Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”, printed in Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff (eds) on behalf of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and other Personal Injuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 174–84 (hereafter: EVZStiftG), § 11 paragraph 1. 31. Telex Neisinger to various, 13 February 2001, with a report on this meeting, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 32. Agnieszka Kublik, ‘Najstarsi nie mogą czekać’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 14 November 2000; Anne Rubinowicz to Hennig, 14 November 2000, EVZ Archives, 501.14; Saathoff to Jałowiecki, 16 November 2000, ibid.; Jałowiecki to Saathoff, 17 November 2000, ibid. 33. Chain email, Warsaw embassy to German Foreign Ministry (Auswärtiges Amt, hereafter: AA), 24 November 2000, 14:33, and lastly Reibnitz to Köbe, 27 November 2000, 12:19 EVZ Archives, 501.14. 34. Bräutigam to Jałowiecki, 30 November 2000, EVZ Archives, 501.14; note on the question of advance payments to elderly Polish victims, 4 December 2000, signed Saathoff, EVZ Archives, 501.14; Jałowiecki to Saathoff, 19 February 2001, ibid. 35. Email Koschnick to Reibnitz, 5 March 2003, signed Elke Hippel, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 36. EVZStiftG §11 paragraph 3; FPNP, communiqué, 25 October 2000, translation, EVZ Archives, 501.14; note on payments to former forced labourers

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from funds of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, 14 November 2000, signed Chmielarz, ibid. 37. Note on talks between the foundation board and the chairman of the Polish partner organization, Jałowiecki, 8 May 2001, unsigned, EVZ Archives, 50091.14. 38. Note Chmielarz, 14 November 2000, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 39. ‘Kriegsgefangene’, unsigned, undated (around 20 November 2000), EVZ Archives, 501.14. 40. Saathoff to Pawłoś, 29 August 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 41. Telex Messerer to AA, 23 September 2002, with a report on the meeting of the FPNP board of trustees, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 42. Email Koschnick to Reibnitz, 5 March 2003, signed Elke Hippel, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 43. Uchwała Nr 3/2003 Zarządu [FPNP] z dnia 17 stycznia 2003 r. w sprawie wypłat ze środków FPNP dla podchorążych Wojska Polskiego Września 1939 r. – byłych jeńców wojennych, FPNP Archives, Przepisy FPNP, II Część. 44. Telex/email Messerer to various, via AA to Ina Thiele (Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’), 18 October 2003, with a report on the thirty-fifth meeting of the FPNP board of trustees, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 45. Telex Viniol (German embassy) to AA, 16 December 2003, with a report on the thirty-sixth meeting of the foundation board, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 46. Note by Piskunowicz for Sułek, 24 January 2002, FPNP Archives, N7. 47. Stan konsultacji międzynarodowych w sprawie odszkodowań dla ofiar pracy niewolniczej i przymusowej w III Rzeszy (po spotkaniach w Bonn, 23–27 August br.), 30 August 1999, signed Jałowiecki, FPNP Archives, P9. 48. Report on the FPNP, 13 October 2000, p. 4, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 49. See Constantin Goschler, Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), 429–37; Protokół z XIV posiedzenia Rady Fundacji Fundacji ‘PolskoNiemieckie Pojednanie’ 11 czerwca 1999 r., p. 6, FPNP Archives, P9; Email Geier to Neisinger, 8 November 2000, 14:09 and 17:00, EVZ Archives, 501.14; Email Geier to Neisinger, 8 November 2000, ibid. 50. Email Neisinger to Keller, forwarded to Saathoff, 24 January 2001, EVZ Archives 501.14. 51. Draft by Dreher for board meeting to Jansen, Bräutigam and Dreher, 27 March 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty. 52. Minutes of a special meeting of the foundation board on 1 June 2001 in Berlin, signed Jansen, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 53. Stanowisko Zarządu Fundacji ‘Polsko-Niemieckie Pojednanie’ odnośnie przewalutowania kwoty EUR 29.083.432,61, 18 June 2001, FPNP Archives, N6. 54. Informacja odnośnie przewalutowania EUR/PLN dokonanego przez Fundację Federalną, 20 June 2001, FPNP Archives, N6. An unnamed banking expert also condemned the incident in the article ‘Die Deutsche Bank und das Zloty-Desaster’, Handelsblatt, 19 September 2001.

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55. Jansen, Bräutigam, Primor to Jałowiecki, 1 August 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty. 56. Jałowiecki to Kastrup, 2 July 2001, FPNP Archives, N6. 57. Ibid. 58. Statement to the press 07/2001, 20 June 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty; fax Jansen to Jałowiecki, 18 July 2001, ibid.; Kastrup to Jałowiecki, 5 July 2001, FPNP Archives, N6. 59. Note on talks, signed Dreher, 1 June 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty. 60. Email Marie Könning to various (mailing list), 16 August 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty. 61. Email, press round-up, Wars to Weizsäcker, 2 August 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty. 62. Email Margarita Chiara to Weizsäcker, press round-up Poland, 17 August 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty; Paul Flückiger, ‘Weniger Geld für ehemalige Zwangsarbeiter in Polen’, Berliner Zeitung, 14 August 2001; Malgorzata Barwicka, ‘Kto kozłem ofiarnym’, Trybuna, 8 August 2001; Agnieszka Kublik, ‘Wypłaty odszkodowań: Obie fundacje winne’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 12 August 2001. 63. ‘Schröder and Kwasniewski in Stettin’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 15 August 2001. 64. Email Wars to Weizsäcker, press round-up Poland, 3 August 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty. 65. Email Neisinger to Weizsäcker, 24 August 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty. 66. Email Neisinger to Reibnitz et al., 17 August 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty; cf. also email Margarita Chiari to Weizsäcker, 17 August 2001, ibid. 67. Email Neisinger, Reibnitz to AA, AA to Weizsäcker, 28 August 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty; draft agreement between the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and the Foundation for Polish-German reconciliation, 12 September 2001, ibid.; Krochmal to Jansen, 12 September 2001, ibid.; Jansen to Krochmal, 12 September 2001, ibid. 68. ‘Betrug in der Zwangsarbeiter-Stiftung’, Spiegel, 30 September 2001; ‘Verdacht auf Betrug und Untreue’, Handelsblatt, 30 September 2001; ‘Ermittlungen im Zloty-Debakel der Zwangsarbeiter-Stiftung’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 October 2001. Notes on the press conference on DM-zloty conversion on 10 October 2001, FPNP Archives, N6; Minutes of the seventh meeting of the board of trustees, 10–11 October 2001, attachment 3: Sachverhaltsdarstellung der Konvertierung der 1. Rate von DM in Zloty (von Herrn Jansen), p. 74–78, EVZ Archives, 105.00. 69. Email Andreas Plake (AA) to Weizsäcker, 25 October 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty; PAP-Meldung ‘Ein Kenner Deutschlands: Prof. Jerzy Sulek übernimmt Leitung der Stiftung Polnisch-Deutsche Aussöhnung’, ibid. 70. Absichtserklärung zu den Elementen für eine Vereinbarung zwischen der Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung, Zukunft (Bundesstiftung) und der Stiftung Polnisch-Deutsche Aussöhnung (Partnerorganisation), 11 December 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 71. Pawłoś pp Sułek to Jansen, 17 December 2001, tables attached, EVZ Archives, 501.14; press release 22/2001: Einvernehmliche Lösung zur

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Frage des Umtauschs von DM in Zloty zwischen Bundesstiftung und polnischer Partnerorganisation, EVZ Archives, Złoty; also Beatrice von Weizsäcker, ‘Deutsch-polnische Versöhnung’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 21 December 2001. 72. Application by Stadler, Walzer, Jansen, Bräutigam to the board of trustees for resolution by circulation, 18 December 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty; press release 22/2001, 21 December 2001, ibid.; email Wars to Weizsäcker, press round-up, 21 December 2001. 73. See e.g. Saathoff to Jałowiecki, 17 August 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.14; Jansen  to Krochmal, 24 August 2001, ibid.; Jansen to Sułek, 17 December 2001, ibid.; press release 22/2001, 21 December 2001, EVZ Archives, Złoty. 74. ‘The Information Campaign of the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation’, 25 September 2000, unsigned, EVZ Archives, 501.14; ‘Information about the activities of the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation in respect of outreach to former slave and forced labourers’, 25 October 2000, ibid.; table of outreach costs, 5 March 2001, ibid. 75. Interview with Magda Cieszkowska, 6 March 2009. 76. Communication Magda Cieszkowska, 6 March 2009. 77. Interview with Agnieszka Dzierżanowska, 7 March 2009. 78. Email Messerer to Reibnitz; Reibnitz to Hückmann; Hückmann to Saathoff, 7 April 2003, EVZ Archives, 501.14; Dorota Kołakowska, ‘Premie za niegospodarczość’, Rzeczpospolita, 7 April 2003; idem, ‘Premie albo sąd’, Rzeczpospolita, 8 April 2003. 79. Press release for the PAP (Polska Agencja Prasowa), unofficial translation, 8 April 2003, signed Sułek et al., FPNP Archives, N8; letter Sułek to Jansen, 9 April 2003, ibid. 80. Letter Sułek to Jansen, corr. by Messerer, 16 April 2003, on the board reshuffle, EVZ Archives, 501.14; Uchwała N2 22/2003 Zarządu z dnia 20 maja 2003 r. w sprawie uchylenia Uchwały Nr 48/2001 Zarządu z dnia 12.12.2001 r. w sprawie nagród rocznych za 2001 rok dla pracowników FPNP …, 20 May 2003, signed Sułek, Drap FPNP Archives, N8. 81. Sułek to Jansen, 28 May 2003, FPNP Archives, N8. 82. Jarosław Szafrański to Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, 5 November 2003, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 83. Zlotkiewicz to AA, with a report on the thirty-seventh meeting of the board of trustees, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 84. Messerer to various, No. 505, 6 December 2005, EVZ Archives, 501.14; Erklärung des Stiftungsrates und des Konsultationsrates sowie des Landesrates und des Präsidiums der PUON, undated (7 December 2005), ibid.; Andrzej Stankiewicz, ‘Krezusi od pojednania’, Rzeczpospolita, 26 January 2006; Jakub Ostałowski, ‘Kombatanci finansowi’, Rzeczpospolita, 26 January 2005. 85. Messerer to various, no. 502, 6 December 2005, EVZ Archives, 501.14. 86. Email Saathoff to Bräutigam, Hennig, Gerlant, Götte, 8 December 2005, with a report by the embassy on the FPNP press conference, EVZ Archives, 501.14.

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87. Komunikaty. Zmiana Zarządu FPNP, 6 January 2006, signed Kasprzycka, FPNP Archives, N11. 88. Interview U.G. (conducted by Patrice Poutrus), 30 June 2008; communication Jakub Deka, 4 March 2009; interview with Agnieszka Dzierżanowska, 2 March 2009; interview with Dariusz Pawłoś, 5 March 2009. 89. Interview Pawłoś. 90. Interview with Katarzyna Kucharska, 3 March 2009; interview with Małgorzata Stefańska-Szostak, 6 March 2009; interview Dzierżanowska, 2 March 2009. 91. Jahresbericht über die Tätigkeit der Stiftung ‘Polnisch-Deutsche Aussöhnung’ für 2002, 14; ibid. 2003, 20; ibid. 2004, 23–24; ibid. 2005, 32. 92. Jahresbericht über die Tätigkeit der Stiftung ‘Polnisch-Deutsche Aussöhnung’ für 2001, 31, 51. 93. Interview U.G.; interview Pawłoś. 94. Bräutigam to Jałowiecki, 6 August 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.14; Note Gerlant for Bank/Saathoff: ‘Diskussionsbedarf in Polen’, 21 January 2003, ibid.; Email Gerlant to Pawłoś, 28 August 2001 [list of cases whose categorization could be elevated], FPNP Archives, N6. 95. Interview Pawłoś; interview Dzierżanowska, who stresses in particular a sense of having ‘managed’ to get a few additional groups, such as the Potulice prisoners, included in the programme. 96. Interview Pawłoś, from approximately 01:49:30. 97. Information from biographical interviews of the group around Alexander von Plato and from review questionnaires (Ex-Post-Fragebögen) in EVZ Archives, 661.14, 1–299, 1–300 and 300–487. 98. Covering letter for ex post reviews, EVZ Archives, 611.14–2, 1–310. 99. On the divergent subjective and political frames of reference of ‘ordinary’ members and association officials, see Alf Lüdtke, Eigen-Sinn: Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus (Hamburg: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1993), esp. 351–440. 100. Interview Stefan Zdzisław Kozłowski, 4 March 2009, from approximately 01:19:20. 101. Interview Witold Dobski, 4 March 2009, 00:06:40. 102. Interview Dobski, approximately 01:38:40–01:39:24. 103. See e.g. Ludwik Krasucki, ‘Erpressung mit der Zeit’, in gruppe offene rechnungen (ed.), The Final Insult. Das Diktat gegen die Überlebenden: Deutsche Erinnerungsabwehr und Nichtentschädigung der NS-Sklavenarbeit (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2003), 129–33.

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Reiter, Raimond. Tötungsstätten für ausländische Kinder im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Zum Spannungsverhältnis von kriegswirtschaftlichem Arbeitseinsatz und nationalsozialistischer Rassenpolitik in Niedersachsen, Hannover: Hahn, 1993. Ruchniewicz, Krzysztof. ‘Deutschland und das Problem der Nach­krieg­ sentschädigung für Polen’, in Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds), Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung, 1945–2000: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006, 667–739. Sandorski, Jan. ‘Zrzeczenie się w 1953 r. przez Polskę reparcji wobec Niemiec w świetle prawa międzynarodowego’, in Sławomir Dębski and Witold M.Góralski (eds), Problem reparacji, odszkodowań i świadczeń w stosunkach polsko-niemieckich 1944–2004, vol. 1, Warsaw: Polski Inst. Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2004, 123–56. Spoerer, Mark. Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939–1945, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001. Sułek, Jerzy. ‘Niemiecka pomoc humanitarna i finansowa w latach 1991–2004 dla poszkodowanych przez III Rzeszę w Polsce, Problemy polityczne i prawne’, in Sławomir Dębski and Witold M.Góralski (eds), Problem reparacji, odszkodowań i świadczeń w stosunkach polsko-niemieckich 1944–2004, vol. 1, Warsaw: Polski Inst. Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2004, 337–76. Torpey, John. Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Zegenhagen, Evelyn. ‘Facilities for Pregnant Forced Laborers and Their Infants in Germany (1943–1945)’, Children and the Holocaust: Symposium Presentations, USHMM 2004, 65–76 (http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/publications/ occasional/2004-09/paper.pdfhttp://www.ushmm.org/research/center/pub lications/occasional/2004-09/paper.pdf).

6 Compensation for Forced Labourers in the Czech Republic Stephanie Zloch

No one raises an eyebrow today at exhibitions or research projects focusing on Nazi forced labour performed by Czechs. In the 1990s, however, things were different. Historical research on the situation in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia had produced no more than a few brief Socialist Czechoslovakian studies1 and an essay by Miroslav Kárný published in 1991.2 These first attempts to analyse the evidence garnered little attention and, significantly, their findings were not viewed in the broader historical context of Nazi occupation and rule in Europe. So when the international negotiations concerning forced labour compensation were held in 1999 and 2000, the German delegation presumed that Czech forced labourers had not endured as harsh a fate as other Ostarbeiter and that ‘they were only discriminated against in relation to Westarbeiter in the sense that Germany did not conclude a social security agreement [with the Czechs] in the post-war years’.3 The present chapter will examine the causes of this remarkable change in outlook on Czech forced labour. Following an introductory section on memory and compensation up to the mid 1990s and a brief overview of the compensation programme administered by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ (EVZ) in the Czech Republic, it will consider two major factors more closely: first, the identity politics actively pursued by the Czech Republic in the last two decades; and second, the civil society dynamics that developed after the end of communist rule. Against this backdrop, the text will analyse claimants’ personal experiences of the compensation programme in practice.

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Dealing with Nazi Forced Labour in Czechoslovakia and the Early Czech Republic Czechoslovakia became an early focus of the National Socialist politics of violence and conquest. The Munich Agreement of September 1938 led to the German annexation of the Sudetengau, the subsequent dissolution of Czechoslovakia and, in March 1939, the invasion of German troops into the newly established ‘Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’. In formal terms, recruitment from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to work in the German Reich, a process that started just under six months before the beginning of the Second World War, was initially based on voluntary employment, fostered by high rates of unemployment and economic duress.4 By June 1939, however, regulations were in place determining that Czech labourers in the German Reich who engaged in political activity, ‘refused to work’, or demonstrated an ‘enemy attitude towards the state’ risked imprisonment.5 A new tightening of the law brought Reinhard Heydrich, Deputy Reich Protector, to Prague. On 4 May 1942, a decree was issued stating that without exception, all men born in 1921 and 1922 and all men and women born in 1924 could be ‘required to serve’ (dienstverpflichtet). Historical research has provided differing assessments of the numerical dimensions of Czech labour in the German Reich between 1939 and 1945.6 To make things more difficult, the living and working conditions of forced labourers remained unstudied for quite a long time and were therefore subject to widely varying assumptions and assessments. A major side effect of the compensation programme for Nazi forced labour was the intensification of academic research, the publication of manifold reports by former forced labourers, the recording of numerous eyewitness interviews, and public exhibitions that included this new source material. This production of knowledge, images and narratives, also a source of orientation and identity, was in no way foreseeable at the end of the Second World War. When the war ended in May 1945, Czech forced labourers returned to their homeland through a variety of different means. Some campaigns existed to bring Czechs – especially concentration camp ­survivors – back home, mostly organized by private individuals, but the vast majority of forced labourers had to make their own way as best they could.7 In the ensuing years, returnees were largely preoccupied with recovering from the immediate damage to their health, getting married and starting families, returning to education or professional life and, to some extent, migrating within the country, especially to the former

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Sudeten regions and Prague.8 They also had public duties to fulfil, such as national military service, from which not even former concentration camp inmates were exempted.9 Memories seemed more of a hindrance in this situation: ‘After the war we wanted to forget everything as quickly as possible because it wasn’t exactly the best time of our lives and anyway all the events that happened after the war overtook it. We were glad to have forgotten.’10 In 1945, the Association of Liberated Political Prisoners and Their Surviving Dependants (Sdružení osvobozených politických věžnů a pozůstalých, SOPVP) was formed, primarily to represent the interests of concentration camp survivors. Following the communist coup d’état of February 1948, the SOPVP was absorbed into the Czech Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters (Svaz protifašistických bojovníků, SPB). The regime-loyal SPB had a major influence on the nation’s official depiction of the Second World War, propagating the idea of active resistance to Nazi occupation as the main grounds for legitimizing communist rule. The Czechoslovakian legislature had also steered developments in this direction with the social welfare laws 164/1946 and 255/1946. Under these, ‘participants in the national fight for freedom’ and ‘political prisoners’ were entitled to compensation; former forced labourers were only entitled to compensation if they had sustained health damage.11 In terms of memorial culture, then, Czechoslovakia aligned itself with other countries of central and eastern Europe and emphasized commemorating ‘heroes’ and ‘fighters’.12 At the same time, Czech forced labourers grew increasingly concerned with gaining international recognition for the injustice they had suffered. A number of individuals defied the considerable diplomatic and legal obstacles to try and obtain compensation payments from West Germany. As a result, several smaller amounts of compensation reached Czechoslovakia by the mid 1960s: under the Federal Compensation Law (BEG) and the Federal Restitution Law (BRüG), under the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany of 1952 and in the form of payments to Jewish concentration camp prisoners by German companies.13 In 1969 West Germany concluded a general agreement with Czechoslovakia to benefit victims of ‘pseudo-medical experiments’. This marked the first time that Czech government agencies took responsibility for distributing West German compensation benefits. Claimants were put through a convoluted selection procedure and payments were issued slowly. It took until March 1973 for the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) to authorize the first payments. The average rate of compensation was DM 8,320 (€4,254); the highest was DM 18,000 (€9,203). The Czech public was not

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informed of these payments from West Germany,14 and the general perception of Nazi injustice in Czechoslovakia during the Second World War remained fragmentary. The political turnaround in 1989 and the attendant mood of reopening within society allowed former forced labourers to speak about their memories of the war openly and without fear of reprisal. In 1994, the Czech parliament enacted a law pursuant to which political prisoners and other victims of Nazi persecution who were recognized as such under Law 255/1946 and had not received compensation from any other country, were entitled to claim a one-time compensation payment.15 A total of CZK 1.6 billion (DM 90 million or €46 million) was subsequently paid out to more than 25,000 people. Bilateral diplomatic negotiations between Czechoslovakia and West Germany were opened in 1990, placing Wiedergutmachung (financial compensation) back on the agenda. However, it proved difficult to reach an agreement as the German side insisted on a ‘package deal’, linking the compensation of Czech Nazi victims with that of Sudeten German expellees.16 Finally, the launch of a US-backed restitution programme for the property of religious – especially Jewish – communities in central and eastern Europe17 and the Central and Eastern European Fund (CEEF) negotiated by the Jewish Claims Conference, providing Holocaust survivors in the Czech Republic with a monthly pension of DM 250 (€128),18 sufficiently increased pressure on Germany to act. In January 1997, the two governments presented a long-awaited ‘GermanCzech Declaration on Mutual Relations and Their Future Development’. On this basis, a Czech-German future fund – the Česko-Německý Fond Budoucnosti (ČNFB) / Deutsch-Tschechischer Zukunftsfonds (DTZF) – was established, endowed with DM 140 million (€71.6 million) from the German side and some DM 25 million (€12.8 million) from the Czech side. Some DM 90 million (€46 million) of this was to be distributed as humanitarian assistance among Czech victims of Nazism. To be eligible, claimants had to have experienced imprisonment or internment or lived in hiding under ‘inhumane conditions’ and not have received any previous payments under the BEG. Some 7,000 victims of Nazism were afforded compensation from this fund from October 1998 onwards.19

International Negotiations and the Compensation Programme for Forced Labour While legislative and diplomatic efforts towards compensation for Czech citizens continued throughout the 1990s, they initially remained

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limited in scope and effectiveness. No breakthrough occurred until the international negotiations on forced labour compensation from 1999 to 2000. The Czech Republic was the smallest country by population participating in the negotiations. Its delegation was led by Jiří Šitler, the head of the Central European Department in the Czech Foreign Ministry. Two former prisoners of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen, Felix Kolmer and Oldřich Stránský, were influential members of the delegation. In March 2000, following a lengthy and arduous search for compromise, the delegations agreed that the Czech Republic would receive a ceiling fund of DM 423 million (€216.3 million). From this sum, claimants of category A (slave labour, concentration camp prisoners) would receive payments of up to DM 15,000 (€7,669) and those in category B (forced labour) up to DM 5,000 (€2,556). The rate of payments to those claiming compensation for any other ‘personal damages due to Nazi injustice’,20 eligible under the option clause, would depend on the total amount of approved applications. Most Czech observers welcomed this outcome; some former forced labourers’ representatives even judged it a ‘great success’.21 The negotiations not only determined the volume of the national ceiling fund but also the requirements for distributing it. The German side was obviously sceptical, if not to say distrustful, of administrative practices in central and eastern Europe. It set out to conclude a ‘comprehensive agreement’ with every future partner organization, ‘in which the requirements, criteria and supervisory devices would be clearly stipulated once again’.22 The Germans already stood firm on their decision to pay compensation to the former forced labourers in two instalments: ‘Only payments by instalments ensure that discipline is maintained by partner organizations. Ex-post controls are not enough.’23 The ČNFB, the Czech-German future fund, was chosen to be the partner organization to implement the programme in the Czech Republic, primarily because it was organized on an equal representation basis and therefore promised greater administrative transparency.24 Even before the international negotiations had officially concluded, in May 2000 the ČNFB set up its own agency for victims of Nazism (Kancelář pro oběti nacismu). The partner organizations had to wait for the establishment of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ in September 2000 before commencing with payments. Even then the German side delayed the payment procedure, referring to a number of pending class-action lawsuits and appeals proceedings in the United States. But on 30 May 2001, once the German Bundestag found that legal

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security had been achieved, progress was swift. Germany issued its first payments in the Czech Republic on 20 June 2001, awarding compensation instalments to exactly 10,000 applicants, including those in the eldest age groups (born before 1921) and a majority who fell under category A. By October, almost half the ceiling fund of DM 423 million (€216.3 million) had been expended. Subsequently, the unexpectedly large number of applications submitted and disputes between the ČNFB and the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ over details of the option clause caused the compensation procedure to stall. In consequence, payment of the second instalment, originally scheduled for March or April 2002, was postponed to July 2003. By the time regular payments concluded on 31 May 2005, 76,231 of a total 107,584 applications had been approved. The ČNFB had afforded compensation to 8,694 applicants in category A; 38,816 in category B; and 28,721 under the option clause. 194 applicants received a total DM 8,300 (€4,244) from the ‘other personal injury’ fund beginning in November 2003. At the same time, the ČNFB had rejected 31,353 applications, almost a third of all those submitted.25 The high-profile Czech outreach campaign, lauded as exemplary compared to those of the other partner organizations in central and eastern Europe, appeared to have had a paradoxical effect. While it elicited responses from a particularly large number of people who had previously not dared to speak openly about their personal experiences during the Second World War, it also raised expectations higher than the compensation programme could actually fulfil.

Identity Politics: The Czech Republic between East and West One unfortunate fact became clear to the Czech delegation at the international negotiations for forced labour compensation in 1999 to 2000: the international community largely overlooked the issue of Czech forced labour during the Second World War. For this reason, the Czech delegation assumed the task of convincing others of their countrymen and women’s suffering, pursuing what resembled a campaign of identity politics. On a cultural level, in order to gain international recognition of Czech citizens’ suffering during the Second World War, the Czechs clearly had to abandon their focus on heroic and combatant figures and devote more attention to the victims of Nazism. To this end, the Czech delegation and later the Czech partner organization, the ČNFB, largely followed the example of ‘Western’ discourse on the

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Holocaust, through which they succeeded in eliciting a strong response in the Czech Republic. The first contentious issue to be addressed was the identification of territories where Nazi forced labour had been carried out. The German negotiators argued for the 1937 borders of the German Reich to be used as a benchmark. This would have excluded Czech forced labourers deployed in the Sudetengau and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from the programme – regions with an extensive arms industry that had formed a major pillar of the Nazi economy. In early 2000, the German side acceded to a compromise suggested by the Americans that the area in question should cover the German Reich of 1937 plus ‘the occupied territories with the exception of Austria’.26 Under this compromise, the Sudetengau was included as ‘occupied territory’ and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as Czech ‘homeland’.27 These territorial definitions played a crucial role in determining whether claimants had been deported or forcibly relocated (disloziert). Deportation was defined as ‘removal across national borders against one’s will’,28 whereas forcible relocation was ‘forced labour in one’s own country’. In the opinion of German negotiators, the latter was ‘not comparable with abduction abroad’,29 since ‘relocated persons [had] retained their cultural and social environment and as a rule only suffered the average wartime fate’.30 Czechs moved to either the German Reich or the Sudetengau were considered deported, while those exploited as forced labourers in the arms industry of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were regarded as having been forcibly relocated. Concepts of deportation and relocation had previously played a key role at a conference held in early September 1999 at the European University Institute in Florence. Here, an international workgroup led by Lutz Niethammer set about calculating the number of surviving former forced labourers. According to the workgroup’s estimates, there were some 47,000 surviving Czech deportees and 15,000 to 50,000 surviving Czech relocates,31 as well as some 7,200 Czech former inmates of concentration camps, ghettos and other places of confinement. The evaluation of these figures during the international negotiations marked a pivotal and conflict-ridden point in the preparation of the compensation programme. In order to minimize the risk of their adjustment to suit the programme’s financial means, the Czech delegation decided to fill the statistics with life. Young historian Tomáš Jelínek compiled official sources from the Nazi period that unequivocally conveyed particular discrimination against Czechs on account of being Slavic.32 This enabled a clear distinction between forced labour

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performed by Czechs and that performed by western European nationals, whom the programme did not intend to compensate. Over the course of implementing the compensation programme, the Czech partner organization, the ČNFB, increasingly relied on information supplied by the applicants. Standard sources of Nazi provenance, such as time-books, could only document one aspect of the forced labour performed, whereas sources such as letters, diaries and eyewitness statements considerably extended the range of insights into forced labour. This applied especially to the ‘minor’, everyday instances of discrimination, which were ‘not easy to infer from conventional sources but were recorded at great length in the memory documents we collected from our applicants, enclosed with their applications’.33 This approach proved useful in dispelling the widely held notion on the German side that Czech forced labourers had suffered a milder fate. By example of the working and living conditions at the Organisation Todt, the Reichsluftschutzbund and the Technische Nothilfe, the ČNFB was able to show that extreme discrimination had been the order of the day, with Czechs being deployed to perform dangerous tasks such as clearing rubble immediately after air raids.34 When it came to implementing the compensation programme, the ČNFB continued the strategy of emphasizing Czech fellowship with Slavic nations, as pursued during the international negotiations. This comes through in the opening lines of the statutory declaration on the Czech application form: ‘I declare that I was made to perform forced labour against my will and that I was subjected to discrimination as a member of a Slavic nation’.35 The ČNFB also cited the histories of persecution of other central and eastern European countries to convince the German foundation’s supervisory teams that the ‘presumption of a larger number of dubious cases at our partner organization is unfounded’.36 In fact, the ČNFB tended to construct notions of a common fate shared by forced labourers of Slavic descent when, for example, it placed the victimization of Czech workers on a par with that of the Polish,37 or when it suggested that not only ethnic Polish applicants from Teschen Silesia should be eligible for compensation on grounds of extreme discrimination but also other applicants of Slavic – that is, Czech – descent.38 The option clause mentioned above provided plenty of scope for negotiation in the field of identity politics. While only an estimated nine to fifteen per cent of applicants falling under the option clause were contentious cases,39 the German foundation and the ČNFB devoted especially intense consideration to these groups. One point at issue was that of the ‘co-affected’. The ČNFB wanted to broaden the scope

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of eligibility for compensation to include widows and orphans of victims, ‘since they were severely financially and/or physically affected by the loss of their partner or parent’.40 However, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ wanted to rule out ‘benefits for indirect victims’. A compromise was reached by introducing the criterion ‘restriction of liberty’, which could apply to long periods of police custody or frequent police checks in connection with the killing or imprisonment of a family member. The argument ran that, in these cases, entire families lived in such an intense state of fear that it amounted to a restriction of their liberty.41 While the German side could not dispute this, the inclusion of this criterion in the Czech option clause served to blur the carefully formulated definition of forced labour ‘under particularly harsh conditions’, intended to exclude large numbers of western European forced labourers from the programme. The staff of the ČNFB made use of the historical knowledge they acquired over the course of the compensation programme to play an active role in Czech discourse on Geschichtspolitik (history politics). They contributed to articles and interviews in the press, on television and in radio programmes. Furthermore, the ČNFB sponsored several publications, including an album of photographs by Zdeněk Tmej,42 memoirs of former forced labourers and a collection of academic essays.43 But the ČNFB probably reached its widest audience with an exhibition on Czech forced labourers in the Third Reich, ‘Im Totaleinsatz: Tschechische Zwangsarbeiter im Dritten Reich’ (‘Total deployment: Czech Forced Labourers in the Third Reich’),44 which was extended several times and shown internationally. From the late 1990s, Czech public interest in the history of the Second World War and its consequences began to focus on questions other than forced labour and compensation for Nazi injustice. Parallel – and to some extent rival – debates took place over the treatment of the Sudeten Germans since the end of the war and the historical positioning of the ‘two totalitarianisms’, Nazism and communism. These touched on the issue of forced labour compensation in several ways. As the international negotiations came to a close in 2000, the Czech Republic sought confirmation from the United States that the agreement thus reached on forced labour compensation would not affect Czech claims to reparations from Germany or the Czech post-war decrees on the expropriation and expulsion of the Sudeten Germans. The Czech Republic saw this as confirmation of the status quo, a protection against future German governments suing for the return of assets to the Sudeten Germans.45 Indeed, in spring 2003 the ČNFB received a request from the Association of Sudeten German Relief Services

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(Arbeitsgemeinschaft sudetendeutscher Sozialwerke) for a ‘humanitarian gesture towards those Sudeten Germans who suffered the worst damages’ and a payment of some €4.5 million. At a meeting in October 2003, the ČNFB’s board of directors voted to reject the petition by a majority that included two German members as well as the four Czech members of the board.46 The Czech compensation law of 10 July 2001 (261/2001) closely reflected the ‘two totalitarianisms’ debate. It was proposed primarily to provide assistance to those who had been imprisoned or in hiding from 1939 to 1945 and who had not benefited from any previous social welfare legislation. But its main motivation was to settle the score historically with communist rule. To this end, persons imprisoned on political grounds between 1948 and 1 January 1990 were also entitled to compensation under the law. In a highly symbolic gesture, the legislature defined these suffered injustices as ‘participation in the national fight for freedom’.47 Hence, the special privileges reserved for many years by the Czechs – as by other nations of central and eastern Europe – for ‘heroes’ and ‘freedom fighters’ were re-appropriated to redress the wrongs of communist rule.

Civil Society Dynamics The political sea change of 1989 launched a process of pluralization and diversification in the field of social initiatives and caused a greater prioritization of media publicity. Significantly for the history of the forced labourer compensation programme, a number of new persecutee interest groups emerged at this time. The Association of Anti-Fascist Fighters (SPB), which had hitherto held a monopoly in the field, was reorganized in 1989 to become the ČSBS (Český svaz bojovníků za svobodu or Czech Association of Fighters for Freedom). The Association of Liberated Political Prisoners and Their Surviving Dependants (SOPVP) remained initially under the umbrella of the ČSBS, although the first signs of conflict loomed as the latter continued to engage in the commemoration of communist resistance fighters and partisans in the Second World War. Nevertheless, many former forced labourers felt that their interests were still not adequately represented. On 5 May 1990, during the Czechoslovakian ‘springtime of associations’, the Association of Forced Labourers (Svaz nuceně nasazených, SNN) was founded in Moravské Budějovice and soon comprised some eighty local branches. In 1996 the SNN counted 42,626 members.48 Besides serving as a forum for

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social exchange, where members could share memories of and collect documents from the period of forced labour, the issue of compensation for Nazi forced labour soon became one of the SNN’s main concerns. On 30 October 1997, the SNN petitioned the Czech parliament for the extension of Law 217/1994 or the enactment of a new compensation law.49 It also applied to the ČNFB for an independent ‘social project’ for its members, without success.50 The SNN experienced a historical high point during the international negotiations for forced labour compensation in 1999 to 2000. Its membership increased again, and its directorate maintained a close dialogue with the Czech Foreign Ministry while simultaneously consulting US persecutee lawyers. In addition, the SNN cultivated friendly relations with Polish and French victims’ associations.51 Members of the SNN also joined in lawsuits against German companies such as Daimler Benz, Bosch and Opel.52 As a result of their contacts with European victims’ associations and compensation activists, the SNN and the breakaway group SOPVP adopted ‘Western’ practices of campaigning for compensation, including using publicity and instruments of constitutional justice such as petitions and civil action. Moreover, their expectations of future compensation changed. They now favoured a lump-sum payment ‘that we could do what we like with’ over the government-controlled social welfare customary in Czechoslovakia before 1989.53 Indeed, the ČNFB’s tenure as the German foundation’s partner organization marked a break with previous Czech administrative practices. Traditionally, a special department for ‘Fighters against Fascism’ in the Defence Ministry, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Social Services had been responsible for compensation benefits. The ČNFB, in contrast, officially operated as an ‘endowment fund’. While government agencies supported its activities – especially the Foreign Ministry, which had led the Czech delegation in the international negotiations and subsequently dispatched members of its staff to assist the ČNFB – the agencies did not hold ultimate authority. Here, the peculiarities of post-communist transformation processes came into play. Although the government and its agencies represented the nation’s newly won sovereignty after 1989, they also embodied unwanted continuities. In this context, the appeal of the NGO as an alternative institutional model grew. NGOs seemed to represent a new, democratic civil society. In the case of the ČNFB, its hands-on approach to its clientele served to consolidate its popularity as an institutional model. The commitment and empathy that the elderly applicants encountered in the ČNFB staff were by no means characteristic of a ‘classic’ bureaucracy.

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The ČNFB could rely on the cooperation of persecutee associations. Volunteers from the SNN provided important personal assistance to applicants, advising them, checking their applications for omissions and forwarding their documents to the ČNFB in Prague.54 This cooperation was rife with emotional highs and lows for the members of the victims’ associations. Certainly when the payments commenced, albeit late, the persecutees had achieved one of their main goals: official recognition for the injustice suffered during the Second World War. But since the programme was governed by the Foundation Law, the victims’ associations’ definitions of forced labour and compensation were disregarded and the logistical aspects of mass claim management handled solely by the ČNFB.55 The victims’ associations therefore found a new role as attentive and critical attendants of the compensation programme. They not only cooperated on the appeals body but also contributed to forming public opinion in the Czech Republic. Oldřich Stránský was the chairman of the statutory appeals body. An important aspect of his position, and that of the other appeals body members of his generation, was to supplement the specialist knowledge of the younger generation – the ČNFB staff – with their own knowledge and experience. However, the appeals body had a tendency, perhaps unrealistically, to attempt to do justice in every individual case by granting applicants extra time to seek evidence, which the ČNFB opposed on the grounds that it excessively prolonged the claims processing and delayed the issuing of payments.56 And while the ČNFB aimed to compensate as many people as possible for forced labour or ‘other Nazi injustices’, Stránský, especially, argued that the payment rates ought to reflect the different degrees of severity of forced labour. For a long time, the SNN and the SOPVP enjoyed the support of the Czech media, with whom they shared a critical view of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and the German Economy Foundation Initiative. Typical commentaries complained about the length of time that had passed before any payments were made and the German economy’s continued failure to pay its entire share into the endowment fund.57 Representatives of the victims’ associations not only agreed to talk to the media, they also actively used the media to publicize their concerns. This came across with impressive clarity in early 2003, when the long-awaited transition to the second instalment threatened to be postponed further. On 27 January 2003, Oldřich Stránský made a statement to the press accusing the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ of pursuing delay tactics. He was quickly backed by the

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director of the Jewish Museum in Prague, Leo Pavlát, who declared: ‘This is an attempt to save money at the expense of Holocaust victims’.58 The German foundation sought the help of the German embassy in Prague to pour oil on the troubled waters.59 But the tension did not really ease until a timeframe for paying the second instalment was fixed for July 2003. Through their media presence and their self-conception as service providers, persecutee associations such as the SNN and the SOPVP thus played a significant part in promoting Czech acceptance of ‘Western’ compensation practices and shifting the focus of memorial culture to the victims of Nazism and the Second World War.

Claimants’ Personal Experiences of the Compensation Programme Over half of the applicants to the compensation programme administered by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ in the Czech Republic were members of persecutee associations. But one cannot necessarily infer the views of former forced labourers from the activities of the associations they belonged to. A small number of people actually published memoirs or expressed their personal views in the framework of oral history projects. This section will attempt to examine the majority opinions of those affected by considering their responses to the compensation procedure. From June 2000, information about forced labourer compensation was widely disseminated to potential applicants not only by the ČNFB but also by non-Czech media such as the Polish-language newspaper Głos Ludu. The Museum of Roma Culture in Brno and the NGO People in Need/Člověk v tísni informed the Czech Roma community. Those who felt they fulfilled the programme’s eligibility criteria were invited to contact the ČNFB to request an application form or could pick one up at the offices of any Czech county council or the persecutee associations SNN, SOPVP and ČSBS. Initially members of persecutee associations hoped that they would not be required to submit new applications. The SNN had gone out on a limb and informed its members that the application forms for a 1998 ČNFB-funded welfare project were also valid for the forced labourer compensation programme.60 Completing new applications not only meant more work but also, in political terms, negated the value of previous applications. At the first board of trustees meeting of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ on 20 September 2000, the ČNFB managed to push through a resolution allowing registered

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members of Czech persecutee associations to submit shortened applications of less than half a page of personal details. A further one and a half pages were taken up with statutory declarations such as the notice of disclaimer, which was a necessary condition for the German foundation’s legal security, and a declaration of previous payments from German companies.61 The longer, standard version of the application form carried more questions concerning personal details, although some, such as that of nationality, were optional.62 For all applicants, the compensation programme administered by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ marked a clear departure from previous compensation programmes. Applicants for a certificate of eligibility under the Czech Law 255/1946 were required to fill at least five pages with information on questions such as nationality, citizenship before and after 1939, and the precise details of times and places of imprisonment or membership in the Czech army and/or partisan forces. They were asked to devote special attention to completing a section describing their activities in the ‘resistance’ in their own words.63 Despite the shortened procedure, many applicants seized the opportunity of personally submitting their applications to tell their life stories to ČNFB staff members. Some application forms were completed in handwriting and some were typed on a computer, presumably with the help of younger family members. Thus, the application process activated not only individual memories but also intergenerational processes of remembering. Anyone who held a certificate of eligibility under Law 255/1946 and was on the records of the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen already had proof that they had performed forced labour. However, some 20,000 applicants did not have any documentary evidence in 2000 and were able to enlist the help of the ČNFB to seek evidence.64 Thus very few applicants were forced to conduct arduous archive searches or correspond directly with German agencies. If no evidence surfaced, applicants could submit witness statements. In these cases, identifying and spelling German place names proved problematic for many of them.65 Once an application was approved, the ČNFB issued an order cheque for compensation. This was the means of payment used by government authorities and public institutions such as health insurance carriers and electricity and water suppliers. Recipients could redeem their order cheques in any branch of ČSOB bank or any post office, either in cash or by bank transfer to another account. Those whose applications were refused had recourse to the appeals body. The appeals procedure usually involved further searches for evidence. More than 20,000 refused

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applicants did not appeal. But problems and distress could also arise from approved applications. About a quarter of eligible former forced labourers did not live to receive the second instalment. Surviving beneficiaries saw their compensation benefits shrink due to a drop in the exchange rate between Czech koruna and euros from 2002.66 And lastly, former forced labourers were not immune to criminal practices. In some cases, beneficiaries received ‘dubious offers of assistance with exchanging their money’.67 Robbery and theft were not frequent occurrences, but some incidents were reported.68 Once former forced labourers had obtained the status of recognized victims of Nazism, the persecutee association SNN considered merging with the ČSBS in order to secure similar privileges for its members. ČSBS members had been entitled to reduced fares on public transportation and discounts on telephone connections since before 1989.69 However, talks with the – now privatized – public transportation and telephone companies revealed that these market-oriented businesses were not interested in making such gestures.70 The question of beneficiaries’ legal successors became increasingly relevant as time progressed and ever more of the former forced labourers passed away. Gradually the programme’s scope was broadened to include younger generations and residents of an increasing number of countries. Many of the children and grandchildren of deceased former forced labourers lived abroad – some in Slovakia and Germany, others elsewhere in western Europe, Scandinavia, North America and even New Zealand.71 The beneficiaries of the forced labour compensation programme regarded these developments in an ambivalent light. In material terms, the payments were larger than those from the compensation initiatives of the 1990s but smaller than those afforded under the 1969 general agreement concerning victims of pseudo-medical experiments. Many former forced labourers made retroactive demands for the full standard wage for their forced labour including holiday pay and pension contributions. In their eyes, the payments should have been a way of restoring lawfulness and equality and not an act of mercy. From this perspective, the forced labour compensation programme was a disappointment: ‘The amounts they paid were ridiculous. I was forcibly engaged for three years. If they had paid me the rightful amount for my work I would have earned more in that time than they gave me now as compensation.’72 Applicants responded with embitterment – ‘how painstakingly all that was scratched up’73 – and sarcasm to the lengthy procedure and waiting period.74 Still, those who did not have high expectations of the programme were able to see it more positively: ‘Money is always useful.’75 Two high

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school students from Brno who visited and interviewed former forced labourers in their hometown summed up their findings as follows: ‘Some continue to harbour a strong sense of having been wronged; others have made their peace with the past and are able to forgive.’76 Interviewers taking part in an oral history project in 2005 and 2006 concluded that many of the compensation recipients were satisfied ‘that this had finally been done. The money helped them but came late.’77 The time before 1989 was also considered in a critical light. Several survivors echoed SOPVP chairman Oldřich Stránský’s view that the forced labourer compensation had come so late to the Czech Republic ‘because we lived behind the Iron Curtain for almost forty years’.78 As he saw it, the pre-1989 communist government and the predecessor organization to the ČSBS, the SPB, had made no efforts to obtain compensation.79 Former forced labourers in the Czech Republic of the 2000s, then, developed a self-perception influenced by several factors. As well as dissociating themselves from the communist era, they adopted the arguments of the ČNFB’s identity politics to emphasize the hardship they had suffered as forced labourers and, as members of the Czech nation, asserted close ties to other forced labourers ‘of Slavic origins’.80 Remarkably enough, despite the dissatisfaction caused by the delays in payments, the beneficiaries came to see their neighbouring country, Germany, in a nuanced and even positive light. This development was propelled above all by German companies, towns and organizations inviting former forced labourers to visit. The SNN newspaper and local association branches received many letters and reports from Czech visitors to Germany testifying that they were ‘kindly received’ and ‘pleasantly surprised at the spirit of cooperation and sympathy [they] encountered’.81 On the strength of these accounts, the chairman of the SNN, Jaroslav Rozhon, concluded: Much has changed in Germany more than half a century after the end of the Second World War, and not only in terms of bombsites and ruins being replaced by modern buildings and cities but also the attitudes of the people and the democratization of society. All office-holders and ordinary German citizens made it clear to our members that they condemn Nazi forced labour and all other Nazi crimes and that they want to consolidate the friendly relations between our two nations in the centre of Europe so that they might live together in peace and prosperity.82

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Conclusion Uniquely, in the Czech Republic, the compensation process prompted divergent historical and social orientations among those affected, some towards the ‘East’ and some towards the ‘West’. Some forced labourers’ representatives asserted commonalities with other countries of central and eastern Europe to emphasize Czech fellowship with the Slavic nations and suggest that their peoples suffered similar persecution during the Second World War. Others, mainly concerned with gaining international recognition for the fate of Czech forced labourers, adapted elements of ‘Western’ Holocaust discourses to do so. This had important consequences for Czech memorial culture: ‘heroes’ such as resistance fighters and partisans began to give way in the public memory to ‘victims’ such as forced labourers and others persecuted by the Nazis.83 The new tendency to follow ‘Western’ models became especially apparent in social practices. Values such as individuality, personal responsibility, transparency, plurality and democracy became the new normative touchstones. The managing director of the ČNFB, Tomáš Kafka, tried to sum up this transformation, describing the new role the Czech Republic perceives for itself in the global discourse on Holocaust and the Second World War: ‘By their inclusion in the compensation programme administered by the Foundation [‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’] the Czech victims of Nazism have overcome their previous isolation during the Cold War and taken an important place in the global family of witnesses to Nazi injustice.’84 Stephanie Zloch is Research Fellow at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, Braunschweig, Germany. She is the author of Polnischer Nationalismus: Politik und Gesellschaft zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen (Cologne: Böhlau, 2010).

Notes   1. František Mainuš, Totální nasazení: Češi na pracích v  Německu 1939–1945 (Brno: Universita J.E. Purkyně, 1970); František Nedbálek, Místa utrpení a vzdoru (Prague: Český svaz protifašistických bojovníků, 1984).   2. Miroslav Kárný, ‘Der “Reichsausgleich” in der deutschen Protektorats­ politik’, in Ulrich Herbert (ed.), Europa und der ‘Reichseinsatz’: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und KZ-Häftlinge in Deutschland 1938–1945 (Essen: Klartext, 1991), 26–50.

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  3. Note: ‘Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”, here: consultations of Graf Lambsdorff with Deputy Secretary Eizenstat in Washington, 9 February 2000: Foundation Law’, 14 January 2000, in EVZ Archives, ASSI, ninth plenary session of the preliminary committee for the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, Berlin, 17 February 2000.   4. Kárný, ‘Reichsausgleich’, 27–29; Patrick Crowhurst, Hitler and Czechoslovakia in WWII: Domination and Retaliation (London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 151–53.   5. Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reichs (Bonn: Dietz, 1985), 63.   6. Numbers range from 340,000 to about 600,000 forced labourers. For the first number, see Mark Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939–1945 (Stuttgart/Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001), 41; for the second number, Kárný, ‘Reichsausgleich’, 44. Still discussing the ‘discrepancies in the data’: Hein Klemann and Sergei Kudryashov, Occupied Economies: An Economic History of Nazi-Occupied Europe, 1939–1945 (London/New York: Berg, 2012), 146–47.   7. Oldřich Stránský, Es gibt keine Gerechtigkeit auf Erden: Erinnerungen eines tschechischen Auschwitz-Überlebenden (Vienna: Böhlau, 2010), 127–29; Felix Kolmer, ‘Ich habe immer für alle gesprochen’, in gruppe offene rechnungen (ed.), The Final Insult: Das Diktat gegen die Überlebenden. Deutsche Erinnerungsabwehr und Nichtentschädigung der NS-Sklavenarbeit (Münster: Unrast, 2003) 134–35; Ján Rakytka, Leben verboten: Die Geschichte eines Überlebenden des Holocaust, der an den Entschädigungsverhandlungen teilnahm (Prague: J. Rakytka, 2001), 64–69; see also accounts in Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt e. V. (ed.), ‘Totaleinsatz’: Zwangsarbeit in Berlin 1943–1945. Tschechische ZeitzeugInnen erinnern sich (Berlin: Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt e. V, 1998).   8. Lenka Kalinová, Východiska, očekávání a realita poválečné doby: K dějinám české společnosti v letech 1945–1948 (Prague: Academia, 2004), 57–59; Jaromír Balcar and Jaroslav Kučera, Von der Rüstkammer des Reiches zum Maschinenwerk des Sozialismus: Wirtschaftslenkung in Böhmen und Mähren 1938 bis 1953 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 352–67.   9. Stránský, Es gibt keine Gerechtigkeit, 149–50. 10. Jana Havlíková and Lucie Vondrysková, Bestimmungsort: Saarland. Tschechische Zwangsarbeiter erinnern sich (Prague: Gemeinnützige Gesellschaft Lebendige Erinnerung, 2004), 81; also Okresní organizací SNN Žd’ar nad Sázavou (ed.), My, nasazení na nucené práce ve druhé světove válce: Z dopisů, vyprávění a dokumentů některých nasazených získaných v roce 2003 (Žd’ar nad Sázavou: Okresní organizací SNN Žd’ar nad Sázavou, 2004), 41; Stránský, Es gibt keine Gerechtigkeit, 165; Michal Vít and Lukáš Vaverka, ‘Nucené práce pro Třetí Říši: Češi ve Stuttgartu a okolí’, in Vladimír Matoušek et al. (eds), Totální nasazení: Historie, která by neměla být zapomenuta. Vzpomínky těch, kteří to prožili. 60 let poté (Brno: Magistrát města Brna. Odbor sociální pěče, 2006), 27.

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11. ‘164. Zákon ze dne 18. července 1946 o péči o vojenské a válečné poškozence a oběti války a fašistické persekuce’, in Sbírka zákonů a nařízení republiky Československé, Ročník 1946 (Prague, 1947), 1099–1122; ‘255. Zákon ze dne 19. prosince 1946 o příslušnících československé armády v zahraničí a o některých jiných účastnících národního boje za osvobození’, in Sbírka zákonů a nařízení republiky Československé, Ročník 1946 (Prague, 1947), 1677–85. Also Tomáš Jelínek and Jaroslav Kučera, ‘Ohnmächtige Zaungäste: Die Entschädigung von tschechoslowakischen NS-Verfolgten’, in Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds), Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in Westund Osteuropa 1945–2000 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), 776–834; Natali Stegmann, Kriegsdeutungen, Staatsgründungen, Sozialpolitik: Der Helden- und Opferdiskurs in der Tschechoslowakei 1918–1948 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010), 250–52. 12. For a detailed account see Peter Hallama, Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer: Tschechische Repräsentationen des Holocaust (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 143–53. 13. Jelínek and Kučera, ‘Ohnmächtige Zaungäste’, 794–95. Here the total is ­estimated at USD 240,000 by 1965; Ronald W. Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World: A History of the Claims Conference, 2nd ed. (London/Portland, OR:  Cass, 2001), 132–33 and 150. The sum given here is USD  533,712 by 1964. For details on the payments by German companies,  see Benjamin B. Ferencz, Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979). 14. Jelínek and Kučera, ‘Ohnmächtige Zaungäste’, 819–25 and 834. 15. ‘217. Zákon ze dne 2. listopadu 1994 o poskytnutí jednorázové peněžní čístky některým obětem nacistické perzekuce’, in Sbírka zákonů České republiky, Ročník 1994 (Prague, 1994), 2112–13. 16. Jelínek and Kučera, ‘Ohnmächtige Zaungäste’, 827–28. 17. Eduard Kubů and Jan Kuklík jun., ‘Reluctant Restitution: The Restitution of Jewish Property in the Bohemian Lands after the Second World War’, in Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler and Philipp Ther (eds), Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), 223–39; Stuart Eizenstat., Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 29–45. 18. Jelínek and Kučera, ‘Ohnmächtige Zaungäste’, 829; Constantin Goschler, Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), 443–49. 19. Jelínek and Kučera, ‘Ohnmächtige Zaungäste’, 829. 20. Note, 26 January 2000, EVZ Archives, ASSI, eighth plenary session of the preliminary committee, Washington, 1 February 2000. 21. ‘Celostátní konference SNN v Havličkově Brodě’, in Informační zpravodaj SNN 21 (2000): 4; Luboš Palata, ‘Složitá cesta k odškodnění’, MF Dnes, 15 July 2000; ‘Oběti nacismu čeká odškosnění’, MF Dnes, 18 July 2000; also Stránský, Es gibt keine Gerechtigkeit, 223–24.

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22. Eleventh plenary session of the preliminary committee for the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, Berlin, 22–23 March 2000, opening statement Graf Lambsdorff, EVZ Archives, ASSI. 23. Note: ‘Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”, here: ninth plenary session, Berlin, 17 February 2000’, 14 February 2000, EVZ Archives, ASSI. 24. Note: ‘Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”, here: sixth plenary session, guideline, 15 November 1999’, EVZ Archives, ASSI. 25. Pressebericht des Deutsch-Tschechischen Zukunftsfonds zum Ende der regulären Auszahlungen aus den Mitteln der deutschen Bundesstiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft, 31 May 2005, EVZ Archives, 501.11. 26. Note: ‘Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”, here: ninth plenary session, Berlin, 17 February 2000’, 14 February 2000, EVZ Archives, ASSI. 27. Informační leták pro žadatele o platby z nucené práce z prostředků německé nadace ‘Připomínka, odpovědnost, budoucnost’, NA, ČNFB 88. 28. Note, 3 March 2000, here: tenth plenary session of the preliminary committee for the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, Washington, 7–8 March 2000, EVZ Archives, ASSI. 29. German embassy Washington to Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt), 28 September 1999, here: fifth plenary session of the preliminary committee for the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, Washington, 6–7 October 1999, EVZ Archives, ASSI. 30. Criteria of the foundation/claims of MOE states, 30 September 1999, ibid. 31. Lutz Niethammer, ‘1999 noch lebende ehemalige NS-Zwangsarbeiter/ innen’, ibid. 32. Tomáš Jelínek, Bestimmungen zur Stellung tschechischer Zwangsarbeiter und deren Behandlung 1939–1945 (Prague: Česko-Německý Fond Budoucnosti, 2000). The same author also published these findings in an article: ‘Achtung, Češi jsou Slovani!’, Respekt, 5–11 June 2000: 20. 33. Note: ‘Zur Unterscheidung von allgemeiner Arbeitspflicht und Zwangsarbeit – Stellungnahme des Deutsch-tschechischen Zukunftsfonds (DTZF) zur Öffnungsklausel’, 5 October 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.11. 34. Sechter to Jansen and Bräutigam, 8 June 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.01/11, first and second tranche; Příručka ověřovatele, EVZ Archives, 501.11. 35. Žádost o přiznání platby z postředku německé nadace ‘Připomínka, odpovědnost a budoucnost’ z titulu nucených prací, Národní Archiv, Prague (NA), ČNFB 92. 36. Sechter to Jansen and Bräutigam, 8 June 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.01/11, first and second tranche. 37. Note: on the distinction between general labour conscription and forced labour – Statement of the German-Czech Future Fund on the escape clause, 5 October 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.11. 38. Inspection report CZ, 8 November 2002, EVZ Archives, 540.01/11, eighth tranche.

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39. Sechter to EVZ board of directors, 4 October 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.11; Sechter to Saathoff, 6 December 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.11. 40. Inspection report, 18 September 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.01/11, third tranche. 41. Kafka, Werner, Sechter and Jelínek to Saathoff, 14 November 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.11; Note to Saathoff et al., 17 January 2002, EVZ Archives, 501.11. 42. Anna Fárová, Tomáš Jelínek and Blanka Chocholvá, Zdeněk Tmej: Totaleinsatz (Prague: Torst, 2001). 43. ČNFB, Kancelář pro oběti nacismu (ed.), ‘Nepřichází-li práce k Tobě…’ Různé podoby nucené práce ve studiích a dokumentech/‘Kommt die Arbeit nicht zu Dir…’ Verschiedene Formen der Zwangsarbeit in Studien und Dokumenten (Prague: ČNFB, 2003). 44. Státní Ústřední Archiv v Praze, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, and ČNFB– Kancelář pro oběti nacismu (eds), Museli pracovat pro Říši: Nucené pracovní nasazení českého obyvatelstva v letech 2. světové války (Prague: Státní Ústřední Archiv, 2004); ČNFB and Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit Berlin-Schöneweide (eds), Im Totaleinsatz: Zwangsarbeit der tschechischen Bevölkerung für das Dritte Reich/Totálně nasazeni: Nucená práce českého obyvatelstva pro třetí říši (Prague/Berlin: ČNFB and Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit Berlin-Schöneweide, 2008). 45. Luboš Palata, ‘Praha má vůči Něměcku podporu USA’, MF Dnes, 14 July 2000: 1, 8; ‘Německu nic nedlužíme’, MF Dnes, 14 July 2000: 6; ‘USA potvrdily oprávněnost vyvlastnění sudetských Němců’, Právo, 14 July 2000: 1, 3; ‘Benešovy dekrety platí, říká americká vláda’, Lidové Noviny, 14 July 2000: 1–2. 46. Daniel Brössler, ‘Humanitäre Geste abgelehnt’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1 October 2003: 1; Berthold Kohler, ‘Kein Wille’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 15 October 2003; ‘Německo respektuje odmítnuté odškodnění sudetských Němců’, Lidové Noviny, 15 October 2003; ‘SRN respektuje verdikt fondu’, Právo, 16 October 2003. 47. ‘261. Zákon ze dne 10. července 2001 o poskytnutí jednorázové peněžní částky účastníkům národního boje za osvobození, politickým vězňům a osobám z rasových nebo náboženských důvodů soustředěných do vojenských pracovních táborů a o změně zákona č. 39/2000 Sb., o poskytnutí jednorázové peněžní částky přislušníkům československých zahraničních armád a spojeneckých armád v letech 1939 až 1945’, in Sbírka zákonů: Česka Republika, Ročnik 2001 (Prague, 2001), 6350–52. 48. ‘Jednání republikové rady SNN’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 15 (1997): 2–3. 49. ‘Jednání republikové rady SNN’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 15 (1997): 3; ‘Jednání o odškodnění’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 15 (1997): 8–9. 50. Jaroslav Rozhon, ‘Vážení přátelé’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 16 (1998): 1; ‘Přehled činnosti Prac: Předsednictva’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 16 (1998): 2; ‘Celostátní konference OO SNN’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 17 (1998): 2–3. 51. ‘Zpráva o činnosti SNN od jeho 4. Sjezdu’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 15 (1997): 6; ‘Francouzi o SNN’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 24 (2002): 4.

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52. ‘Jednání o odškodnění z  Německa’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 18 (1999): 3–4. 53. Stránský, Es gibt keine Gerechtigkeit, 213. 54. Vít and Vaverka, ‘Nucené práce’, 30; Libuše Audrlická et al., Nasazení na nucené práce v Říši (Hradec Králové: Typoscript, 2008), 116. 55. ‘Republiková rada SNN zasedala’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 19 (1999): 3. 56. Inspection Report CZ, cases of complaints, 25 April 2002, EVZ Archives, 540.01/11, sixth tranche. 57. ‘Nadace stále ještě peníze na odškodnění’, MF Dnes, 19 June 2001; Radko Kubičko, ‘Posdě: Posdě, ale přece’, Lidové Noviny, 21 June 2001; Jiří Růžička, ‘Poukázka smazala hořkost’, Právo, 22 June 2001: 1–2; ‘Co jsme prožili, se nedá odškodnit’, MF Dnes, 23 June 2000: 1. 58. Oldřich Stránský and Karel Růžička, ‘Proti zdržovací taktice při vyplácení odškodnění za otrocké a nucené práce’, Apel: Zpravodaj SOPVP 2(1) (2003): 1; German embassy Prague to Auswärtiges Amt, 28 January 2003, EVZ Archives, 501.11. 59. German embassy Prague to Auswärtiges Amt, 28 January 2003, EVZ Archives, 501.11. 60. ‘Jak je to s přispěvkem na zdravotní a sociální péči?’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 18 (1999): 2. 61. Žádost p přiznání platby z postředku německé nadace ‘Připomínka, odpovědnost a budoucnost’ z titulu nucených prací (short version), EVZ Archives, 540.01/11, first and second tranche. 62. Žadost o přiznání platby z postředku německé nadace ‘Připomínka, odpovědnost a budoucnost’ z titulu nucených prací (full text), NA, ČNFB 92. 63. Untitled (application for a certificate of eligibility under Law 255/1946), EVZ Archives, 540.01711, first and second tranche. 64. Partner organization: the German-Czech Future Fund, EVZ Archives, 501.11 (2002). 65. Sechter to Jansen and Bräutigam, 8 June 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.01/11, first and second tranche. 66. Note to Jansen et al., 15 April 2002, EVZ Archives, 501.11 (2002). The drop in the exchange rate reduced compensation rates by up to several thousand Czech koruna. CZK 1,000 was roughly equivalent to €30 at the time. 67. Inspection report, 23 June 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.01/11, first and second tranche. 68. For some examples, see: ‘Podvodník se snaží okrást odškodněné’, Právo, 30 June 2001; ‘Podvodníci okrádají staré lidi, trvdí, že vyplácejí odškodnění’, Lidové Noviny, 18 July 2001; ‘Lupiči připravili staříka o odškodnění’, Metro, 14 January 2002: 2; ‘Lupiči ukradli důchodci peníze za nucené práce’, MF Dnes, 14 January 2002. 69. ‘Zpráva o jednání 5. Celostátního sjezdu delegátů SNN’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 23 (2001): 1–4. 70. ‘Republiková rada zasedala’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 25 (2002): 4. 71. NA, ČNFB, finance, 16.

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72. Vít and Vaverka, ‘Nucené práce’, 31; see also the eyewitness reports in Havlíková and Vondrysková, Bestimmungsort: Saarland, 83; Okresní organizací SNN Žd’ar nad Sázavou, My, nasazení, 1; Audrlická, Nasazení na nucené práce v Říši, 5. 73. Eyewitness reports in: Havlíková and Vondrysková, Bestimmungsort: Saarland, 83. 74. Audrlická, Nasazení na nucené práce v Říši, 113–14. 75. Vít and Vaverka, ‘Nucené práce’, 40. 76. Vít and Vaverka, ‘Nucené práce’, 40. 77. Šárka Jarská, ‘Tschechen als Zwangs- und Sklavenarbeiter im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld (eds), Hitlers Sklaven: Lebensgeschichtliche Analysen zur Zwangsarbeit im internationalen Vergleich (Vienna: Böhlau, 2008), 53–54. 78. ‘Z vystoupení hostů’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 27 (2003): 6. 79. Oldřich Stránský, ‘Minulost a budoucnost SOPVP’, Apel: Zpravodaj SOPVP 3 (2003): 2; also SNN chairman Jaroslav Rozhon, Informační zpravodaj SNN 23 (2001): 1; Vladimír Matoušek, ‘Úvodem několik sdělení’, in Totální nasazení: Historie, která by neměla být zapomenuta. Vzpomínky těch, kteří to prožili. 60 let poté (Brno: Magistrát města Brna. Odbor sociální pěče, 2006), 6; Vít and Vaverka, ‘Nucené práce’, 29. 80. Rakytka, Leben verboten, 74. 81. ‘Různá sdělení, Informační zpravodaj SNN 23 (2001): 10; ‘Svaz nuceně´nasazených a Německo’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 24 (2003): 3–4; ‘Čtenářský koutek’, Informační zpravodaj SNN 24 (2002): 6–7. 82. Jaroslav Rozhon, Informační zpravodaj SNN 24 (2002): 1. 83. Czech Jews contested the official memorial culture already in the late 1950s and 1960s, but gained only partial recognition of their suffering: Hallama, Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer, 186–211. 84. Tomáš Kafka, ‘Život po odškodňování’, Apel: Zpravodaj SOPVP 2 (2003): 5.

Bibliography Audrlická, Libuše et al. Nasazení na nucené práce v Říši, Hradec Králové: Typoscript, 2008. Balcar, Jaromír and Kučera, Jaroslav. Von der Rüstkammer des Reiches zum Maschinenwerk des Sozialismus: Wirtschaftslenkung in Böhmen und Mähren 1938 bis 1953, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt e. V. (ed.). ‘Totaleinsatz’: Zwangsarbeit in Berlin 1943–1945: Tschechische ZeitzeugInnen erinnern sich, Berlin: Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt e. V., 1998. ČNFB and Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit Berlin-Schöneweide (eds). Im Totaleinsatz: Zwangsarbeit der tschechischen Bevölkerung für das Dritte Reich/Totálně nasazeni: Nucená práce českého obyvatelstva pro třetí říši, Prague/ Berlin: ČNFB and Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit BerlinSchöneweide, 2008.

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ČNFB, Kancelář pro oběti nacismu (ed.). ‘Nepřichází-li práce k Tobě…’ Různé podoby nucené práce ve studiích a dokumentech/‘Kommt die Arbeit nicht zu Dir…’ Verschiedene Formen der Zwangsarbeit in Studien und Dokumenten, Prague: ČNFB, 2003. Crowhurst, Patrick. Hitler and Czechoslovakia in WWII: Domination and Retaliation, London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013. Eizenstat, Stuart. Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II, New York: Public Affairs, 2003. Fárová, Anna, Tomáš Jelínek and Blanka Chocholvá. Zdeněk Tmej: Totaleinsatz, Prague: Torst, 2001. Ferencz, Benjamin B. Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. Geppert, Daniela and Christine Glauning. ‘Eine schwierige Erinnerung in Deutschland: Zwangsarbeit der tschechischen Bevölkerung für das Dritte Reich’, in ČNFB and Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit BerlinSchöneweide (eds), Im Totaleinsatz: Zwangsarbeit der tschechischen Bevölkerung für das Dritte Reich/Totálně nasazeni: Nucená práce českého obyvatelstva pro třetí říši, Prague/Berlin: ČNFB and Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit Berlin-Schöneweide, 2008, 34–44. Goschler, Constantin. Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed., Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008. gruppe offene rechnungen (ed.). The Final Insult: Das Diktat gegen die Überlebenden. Deutsche Erinnerungsabwehr und Nichtentschädigung der NS-Sklavenarbeit, Münster: Unrast, 2003. Hallama, Peter. Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer: Tschechische Repräsentationen des Holocaust, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. Havlíková, Jana and Lucie Vondrysková. Bestimmungsort: Saarland. Tschechische Zwangsarbeiter erinnern sich, Prague: Gemeinnützige Gesellschaft Lebendige Erinnerung, 2004. Herbert, Ulrich. Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reichs, Bonn: Dietz, 1985. Jarská, Šárka. ‘Tschechen als Zwangs- und Sklavenarbeiter im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld (eds), Hitlers Sklaven: Lebensgeschichtliche Analysen zur Zwangsarbeit im internationalen Vergleich, Vienna: Böhlau, 2008, 45–54. Jelínek, Tomáš and Jaroslav Kučera. ‘Ohnmächtige Zaungäste: Die Entschädigung von tschechoslowakischen NS-Verfolgten’, in Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel and Tobias Winstel (eds), Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa 1945–2000, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006, 776–834. Jelínek, Tomáš. Bestimmungen zur Stellung tschechischer Zwangsarbeiter und deren Behandlung 1939–1945, Prague: Česko-Německý Fond Budoucnosti, 2000. Kalinová, Lenka. Východiska, očekávání a realita poválečné doby: K dějinám české společnosti v letech 1945–1948, Prague: Academia, 2004. Kárný, Miroslav. ‘Der “Reichsausgleich” in der deutschen Protektoratspolitik’, in Ulrich Herbert (ed.), Europa und der ‘Reichseinsatz’: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter,

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Kriegsgefangene und KZ-Häftlinge in Deutschland 1938–1945, Essen: Klartext, 1991, 26–50. Klemann, Hein and Sergei Kudryashov. Occupied Economies: An Economic  History  of Nazi-Occupied Europe, 1939–1945, London/New York: Berg, 2012. Kolmer, Felix. ‘Ich habe immer für alle gesprochen’, in gruppe offene rechnungen (ed.), The Final Insult: Das Diktat gegen die Überlebenden. Deutsche Erinnerungsabwehr und Nichtentschädigung der NS-Sklavenarbeit, Münster: Unrast, 2003, 134–35. Kubů, Eduard and Jan Kuklík jun. ‘Reluctant Restitution: The Restitution of Jewish Property in the Bohemian Lands after the Second World War’, in Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler and Philipp Ther (eds), Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe, New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2007, 223–39. Mainuš, František. Totální nasazení: Češi na pracích v Německu 1939–1945, Brno: Universita J.E. Purkyně, 1970. Matoušek, Vladimír. ‘Úvodem několik sdělení’, in Vladimír Matoušek et al. (eds), Totální nasazení: Historie, která by neměla být zapomenuta. Vzpomínky těch, kteří to prožili. 60 let poté, Brno: Magistrát města Brna. Odbor sociální pěče, 2006, 6–7. Nedbálek, František. Místa utrpení a vzdoru, Prague: Český svaz protifašistických bojovníků, 1984. Okresní organizací SNN Žd’ar nad Sázavou (ed.). My, nasazení na nucené práce ve druhé světove válce: Z  dopisů, vyprávění a dokumentů některých nasazených získaných v roce 2003, Žd’ar nad Sázavou: Okresní organizací SNN Žd’ar nad Sázavou, 2004. Rakytka, Ján. Leben verboten: Die Geschichte eines Überlebenden des Holocaust, der an den Entschädigungsverhandlungen teilnahm, Prague: J. Rakytka, 2001. Spoerer, Mark. Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939–1945, Stuttgart/Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001. Státní Ústřední Archiv v Praze, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, and ČNFB– Kancelář pro oběti nacismu (eds). Museli pracovat pro Říši: Nucené pracovní nasazení českého obyvatelstva v letech 2. světové války, Prague: Státní Ústřední Archiv, 2004. Stegmann, Natali. Kriegsdeutungen, Staatsgründungen, Sozialpolitik: Der Heldenund Opferdiskurs in der Tschechoslowakei 1918–1948, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010. Stránský, Oldřich. Es gibt keine Gerechtigkeit auf Erden: Erinnerungen eines tschechischen Auschwitz-Überlebenden, Vienna: Böhlau, 2010. Vít, Michal and Lukáš Vaverka. ‘Nucené práce pro Třetí Říši: Češi ve Stuttgartu a okolí’, in Vladimír Matoušek et al. (eds), Totální nasazení: Historie, která by neměla být zapomenuta. Vzpomínky těch, kteří to prožili. 60 let poté, Brno: Magistrát města Brna. Odbor sociální pěče, 2006, 8–40. ‘Vzpomínky těch, kteří byli totálně nasazení v Německu’, in Vladimír Matoušek et al. (eds), Totální nasazení: Historie, která by neměla být zapomenuta. Vzpomínky

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těch, kteří to prožili. 60 let poté, Brno: Magistrát města Brna. Odbor sociální pěče, 2006, 82–112. Zweig, Ronald W. German Reparations and the Jewish World: A History of the Claims Conference, 2nd ed., London/Portland, OR: Cass, 2001.

7 ‘We Cannot Allow the Words of Apology to Sound Only on Gravestones’ Forced Labourer Compensation in Ukraine Julia Landau

In northern Kiev,1 at Dorogozhychi metro station, there are several monuments commemorating the murder and enslavement of the Ukrainian population during the Second World War, including one erected in 2005 in memory of Ukrainian forced labourers. Dorogozhychi is situated close to the ravine Babi Yar, where some 200,000 people were murdered by the occupying Germans prior to Kiev’s liberation on 5 November

Illustration 7.1 ‘Remembrance for the sake of the future’ – memorial in Kiev to the Ukrainian Ostarbeiter, erected in 2005 (author photo).

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1943.2 Today, the memorial park next to the metro station stands as an illustration of how memorial culture, and the former forced labourers’ place in it, has changed over the years. The memorial to the mass murder of Babi Yar has stood in a dip in the centre of the small park since 1976. To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the massacre of over 34,000 Jewish citizens on 29–30 September 1941, the Kiev Jewish Community erected a small, triangular, red granite rock in front of it, beside a narrow path. Walking in a half-circle towards the dominant central monument, one passes a memorial slab and a wooden cross in memory of the Ukrainian writer Olena Teliha, a member of the Underground Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Organizatsija Ukraïnskykh Natsionalistiv, OUN) and among those murdered in Babi Yar. And lastly, there is the memorial to the Ukrainian forced labourers, erected in 2005, bearing the motto ‘Remembrance for the sake of the future’. The various memorials reflect the range of politico-semantic concepts informing Soviet and post-Soviet Second World War remembrance in Ukraine. The late Soviet, central Babi Yar monument shows a frontal view of a ‘combatant’ – the dominant figure in Soviet commemoration of the Second World War. Throughout the Soviet era, memories of the civilian population’s suffering were occluded under heroic portrayals of ‘the motherland’ and similar constructs. The wooden cross for the OUN fighters symbolizes a new iconography with religious connotations, which claims the secular Soviet memorial site for its own commemoration of national freedom fighters. The 2005 memorial to the Ostarbeiter contrasts with these by calling to mind the suffering of the young and predominantly female Ukrainian population, represented by the statue of a small girl – a childlike and innocent prisoner. The key words ‘remembrance’ and ‘future’ echo the name of the German Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, set up to administer the compensation payments to former forced labourers. These changes in political semantics point to changes on a social level, too. In the Soviet Union, veterans were celebrated as former ‘combatants’ and enjoyed many privileges, whereas Ukrainian, antiSoviet OUN fighters were regarded as bearers of a dangerous counter-­ memory, and Ostarbeiter, concentration camp inmates and ‘victims’ were suspected of having collaborated. Détente and perestroika made it possible to portray the fates of individuals in a non-heroic manner for the first time, and new forms of public Second World War remembrance have evolved since the 1990s. Nevertheless, many former Ostarbeiter continued to suppress the fact that they had lived under occupation

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or had been forced to work for enemy industry in order to avoid being confronted with the still latent accusation of collaboration. The arrival of the first relatively small one-off payments in Ukraine from Germany in the mid 1990s presented an opportunity to acknowledge the former persecutees, who were now very old and living in difficult circumstances, and to put an end to their stigmatization. The terms ‘prisoner’ and ‘victim’ were reassessed in a more objective light. But since they were mostly linked with notions of minority – the memory of ‘child victims/prisoners’ predominated – the latent suspicion of collaboration was still carried over to the present, directed at those who had been adult victims of Nazism. Did former forced labourers actually gain public recognition of their suffering and the respect of society in Ukraine? What significance did the German payments have for Ukrainian applicants? What significance did the compensation programme of the German Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ in the years 2001 to 2007 have for society in Ukraine? And how was this globally applicable programme adapted to the specific historical and social context of Ukraine?

Where are the Ukrainian Ostarbeiters? For many years, the presumed number of Ukrainian forced labourers in Germany was more or less based on rough estimates. Recent research has shown that a total of almost 4.3 million Soviet civilians are likely to have been abducted to Germany; 2.25 million came from Ukraine. By 1950, 1.85 million Ukrainian civilians had been repatriated – about half the total number of repatriated Soviet civilians.3 On their return, the former prisoners of war and civilian workers were held in filtration camps where they were screened for their loyalty to the state.4 To this end, any documents they carried, such as timebooks, passports, military tickets or photographs, were confiscated. A repatriation file was started on every repatriate over the age of sixteen and sent to the KGB representative in their places of settlement or hometowns.5 Having completed the filtration procedure, many returnees were refused settlement permits for their places of origin.6 Female returnees from rural areas were most likely to be allowed to return to their hometowns or villages, where they were screened again by NKVD agents. While rural repatriates were not subjected to particular persecution, returnees to urban areas faced ongoing controls and discrimination through the Soviet passport system – a device for supervising the population and monitoring the supply of settlement

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and work permits. Major cities remained out of bounds for returnees.7 During a renewed wave of cleansing in 1946 and 1947, the KGB rearrested some 150,000 repatriates who had already returned home after being discharged from filtration. In the new bipolar global order of the Cold War, the returnees from the British, American and French zones of occupation were regarded as carrying a dangerous strain of ‘cosmopolitanism’ that supposedly threatened Soviet society in its increasing, self-imposed isolation.8 In more recent decades, scholars have interpreted the filtration and repatriation system as a key instrument for controlling population movements and reconstructing the Stalinist social order after the Second World War.9 In any case, the repatriates returned to regions branded as potentially treacherous, having been under occupation for some years. This applied especially to western Ukraine, where Ukrainian national organizations operating underground threatened the progress of Sovietization.10 Ukrainians from these territories were collectively deported to regions far from the border and eastern Ukrainians and Russians were settled in western Ukraine. A large proportion of the returnees were settled in the regions around Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk and made to join the workforce rebuilding heavy industry.

Different Perceptions of Nazi Forced Labour in Germany and Ukraine In the 1990s, a number of civic initiatives were launched in Germany to investigate the local history of forced labour in their areas. Their members organized visits by the now elderly former forced labourers, including many Ukrainians, to talk about how they were deported from their homes and forced to work in factories, for local government or agriculture. The elderly visitors also described the obstacles and hardships they faced when they returned to their homeland.11 In this way, the distant, unfamiliar Ukraine – still new on the political map of Europe – gradually became tangible to the Germans. However, in contrast to forced labour in Germany, forced labour within occupied Ukraine and other occupied territories continued to be largely overlooked by German research.12 Very little was known of the various places of confinement, camps and ghettos in occupied Ukraine.13 The scholarly perspective has only broadened in recent years due to a process that ran roughly parallel to the compensation programme in eastern Europe.14

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In Soviet-and post-Soviet Ukrainian historiography on the Second World War, forced labour was portrayed as just one form of repression and persecution during Nazi occupation. Interest in the history of Ukrainian society under occupation did not begin to grow until the 1980s and 1990s, when historical research began to focus on topics such as the famine of 1932 and 1933 and everyday life in the Second World War. These studies were positioned within a national narrative that emphasized Ukraine’s role as a victim between two totalitarian regimes.15 The history of repression, deportation and forced labour under German occupation initially remained in the background.16 But here, again, the compensation programme acted as a catalyst to prompt new research into the forced labour, recruitment and re-inclusion of Ukrainians.17

First Compensation Payments in the 1990s Similarly to events in Russia and Belarus, the Ukrainian Foundation Understanding and Reconciliation – later to become the Ukrainian partner organization of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ – was set up on the basis of an agreement between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, concluded on 16 December 1992 in Moscow.18 On 15 August 1993, the three founding countries of the CIS – the Russian Federation, Belarus and Ukraine – drew up a treaty sharing out the compensation fund between them: the Russian Federation and Ukraine each received DM 400 million ($229 million) and Belarus DM 200 million ($114 million). The treaty also stipulated that persecutees living in former Soviet republics other than the three signatory states were to receive compensation payments from the fund allocated to the country where they were persecuted or exploited. On 16 June 1993, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine founded the Ukrainian National Foundation Understanding and Reconciliation (UNF). The foundation’s supervisory board determined the criteria for distributing the funds. A joint German-Russian-Ukrainian-Belarusian treaty of 1993 broadly outlined the groups entitled to benefits: Nazi persecutees who had been detained in concentration camps, prisons or ghettos or who had performed forced labour for at least six months and those who had been child victims of persecutory measures such as enforced adoption or confinement in labour camps. The Ukrainian foundation was responsible for determining how to distribute its own share of the fund among the Nazi victims.

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To do so, the Ukrainian foundation took not only the degree of claimants’ historical suffering into account but also their contemporary standard of living and state of health. Those with disability status were allocated a larger amount of compensation – similarly to combat veterans’ welfare regulations – than those with the status of detainee forced labourer. Disabled former detainees were assigned equal status to disabled Second World War veterans. Detainees who had been minors at the time of their persecution and were free of the taint of suspected collaboration were given distinct privileges.19 The individual sums were small: a former forced labourer deployed in industry with disability status was eligible to receive DM 660 ($387). These payments reached the former forced labourers in Ukraine at a time of extraordinary economic crisis. Hyperinflation was causing the value of Ukrainian currency to fall daily. Wages and pensions were not being paid; electricity, gas and water supplies were frequently interrupted. Meanwhile, a small caste of super-rich oligarchs had been steadily amassing wealth from the campaign of privatizations and, with the help of the state, gaining political influence in Ukraine since the 1980s.20 It was into this difficult political situation, in the years 1994 to 1996, that Germany transferred DM 400 million ($229 million) to the Ukrainian National Foundation in three instalments, to be distributed at the latter’s discretion.21 A scandal occurred when DM 86 million ($50 million) disappeared from the fund following the bankruptcy of Gradobank Ukraine. In October 2000, Viktor Shcherditsky, a Ukrainian Member of Parliament, was found guilty of embezzlement and the losses were reimbursed from the public domain.22 The incident diminished the Ukrainian foundation’s credibility in the eyes of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and the various other German players supporting the claims of forced labourers. And within its own politically destabilized country, claimants approached the Ukrainian foundation with mistrust.

International Negotiations Prior to the establishment of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and the launch of the second compensation programme, Ukraine took part in multilateral international negotiations. Participants included spokespeople for the various Nazi victims’ associations and US lawyers representing the Nazi persecutees in post-Soviet states as well as the chairman of the Ukrainian National Foundation Understanding and Reconciliation. In this international

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arena, the Ukrainian representatives sought to secure strategic alliances with the other central and eastern European countries.23 They also tried to emphasize Ukraine’s peculiar position as a new subject under international law with a unique historical fate within Europe: ‘Ukraine – that is the state in Europe that suffered most under Hitler’s aggression. … The extent of human casualties and material losses that Ukraine suffered exceed analogous amounts in the wealthy states of Europe.’24 Bilateral negotiations between Germany and Ukraine from summer 1999 marked a period of tough bargaining over the number of potential claimants to the Ukrainian foundation. While the German side felt that the figures presented by the Ukrainian foundation were ‘exaggerated’,25 the chairman of the association of former underage detainees insisted there were ‘845,980 claimants’ in Ukraine.26 By asserting this number, he called for recognition of all the victims of occupation in Ukraine as well as the political significance of the specific historical injustice done to Ukraine. But the German side insisted that international political demands made it necessary to impose certain limitations and that a ‘completely satisfactory’ solution for eastern Europe was ‘unaffordable’.27 While Germany reiterated its view that the Ukrainian figures on national victims were ‘excessive’ during negotiations with the United States,28 it signalled its willingness to come to an agreement with the politically weightier partner, Russia.29 The challenge of including all the different victim categories in the compensation scheme was now shifted on to the individual participating countries. The reconciliation foundations were able to issue payments, according to fixed quotas, to ‘victim groups not taken into account by the German suggestions … albeit at the cost of reducing the amount paid to each victim’.30 For the Ukrainian foundation, this was attended by the unwelcome burden of responsibility for sharing funds among former forced labourers in industry and agriculture. Moreover, the UNF and representatives of other central and eastern European countries objected to the Foundation Law’s stipulation that payments should be made in two instalments, after the first of which recipients were required to sign a statement renouncing any future claims. Other controversial aspects of the Foundation Law passed in August 2000 were the missing inclusion of statutory victim categories such as ‘children of former forced labourers’ and ‘forced labourers in agriculture’ and the stipulation that the descendants of former victims should receive benefits according to national laws of succession.31 Another factor complicating the reception within Ukraine of the procedure determined by the German Foundation Law was the fact that Ukraine had recently enacted its own law on the provision of benefits

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to Nazi persecutees, which in some respects contradicted the German law.

The Ukrainian Law on Nazi Victims and the German Foundation Establishment Act On 23 March 2000, President Kuchma signed the law ‘on the victims of Nazi persecution’, finally answering the victims’ associations demands for a specific victim status. The law marked a unique step within the post-Soviet sphere to recognize former Nazi persecutees from Ukraine as entitled to special statutory benefits.32 It defined those Ukrainians persecuted under the Nazis and stipulated the social benefits they were entitled to, graded in a hierarchical order: former underage detainees with disability status were eligible for the highest benefits while adult detainees, forced labourers and partisans were entitled to far smaller benefits. It made only marginal provisions for administering the future, transnationally organized compensation payments. In contrast to the later German Foundation Act, which clearly defined the persecution it addressed as limited to within the ‘German borders of 1937’ or Germanoccupied territories, and excluded allied states, the Ukrainian law recognized all deportees in general as ‘victims of Nazi persecution’.33 The German Foundation Law was very differently structured. First and foremost it governed the organization of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, and secondly, the use and allocation of the endowment funds. It defined only briefly the forced labourers entitled to benefits under the scheme: former forced labourers who had been interned in concentration camps or other places of confinement or deported to the ‘Greater German Reich’ or territories occupied by the German Reich.34 In contrast to the Ukrainian victims’ law, it did not make provisions for taking the age or current state of health of the former persecutees into account. Thus, in 2000, two divergent arms of victim legislation were introduced to Ukrainian victims of Nazism: a Ukrainian law on ‘the compensation of victims’ and a German law governing ‘payments’ to ‘eligible’ Ukrainians. Mediating between these two sets of regulations posed a challenge for the UNF and victims’ associations.

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Implementing the Compensation Programme Within Local Contexts The Foundation Establishment Act came into force on 12 August 2000 but was not implemented in Ukraine until almost a year later, after the terms of the scheme had been negotiated and fixed in a GermanUkrainian ‘partner treaty’. Only then could the Ukrainian partner organization actually start issuing payments. In view of the lower life expectancy in eastern Europe, the national partner organizations tried to have the first compensation instalment raised from the stipulated fifty per cent for former concentration camp and ghetto detainees and just thirty-five per cent for former deportee forced labourers.35 Following the mediation of the Polish partner organization’s representative, who urged the German board of trustees ‘to trust’36 the figures submitted by the partner organizations, the first instalment was raised to sixty-five per cent.37 The payment procedure transpired to be another matter of dispute. The Ukrainian foundation pointed out that the majority of beneficiaries did not have a bank account or any experience of dealing with banks, and proposed issuing individual benefits in cash. Most former victims, the UNF argued, lived far away from any banks and could not be expected to travel great distances to collect their benefits. Thus the German side was confronted with new insights into the reality of life in post-Soviet, eastern Europe and was forced to realize that the standard of living in Ukraine was not on a par with that of Poland and the Czech Republic.38 In the meantime, public pressure within Ukraine was increasing. In an open letter to the members of the German Bundestag, the three largest Ukrainian victims’ associations called for payments to be issued without delay. Soon afterwards, the Ukrainian parliament echoed their demands by calling on the German Bundestag ‘to start immediately with the compensation of concentration camp and ghetto prisoners, disabled people and those aged eighty and over’. They lent moral weight to their demand with the warning: ‘We cannot allow the words of apology to sound only on gravestones.’39 On a socio-political level, then, there was renewed discussion of questions of principle – s­ymbolic gestures of apology only make sense if they are received by the ­addressees – when those administering the scheme had already progressed to discussing more pragmatic questions of its implementation. On 6 August 2001 the Ukrainian foundation together with chairman of the board of directors of the Foundation ‘Remembrance,

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Responsibility and Future’, Michael Jansen, finally announced the commencement of payments in Ukraine. But when the German foundation postponed the original deadline for submitting applications, 11 August 2001, to the end of December 2001,40 it was not aware of the significance this step had for the claimants. Most of them submitted their claims by hand as they did not trust the Ukrainian postal service and attached a great deal of importance to the official act of handing over their applications. To many it was important to be able to talk to the office staff about their histories and to convey them personally rather than relying on the entries in the application questionnaire. Indeed, the mostly rural-­dwelling applicants went to considerable lengths to do so. Many of them embarked on day-long bus or train journeys to reach a branch of the Ukrainian foundation in the oblast capital, and take their place in a long line on arrival. In winter 2001, as the deadline approached, applicants waited in line in the bitter cold until well into the night while foundation staff worked overtime in poorly heated rooms in a bid to process all the applications.41 In each of the twenty-five regional branches of the Ukrainian foundation, an average of four to ten members of staff tackled the problem of deciding which applicants were eligible and which were not. Once applicants’ details were entered into the foundation’s database, the individual biographies became abstracted, structured and streamlined, and finally arranged into statutory categories under the Foundation Law. Payments were issued rapidly. Months before the deadline on 31 December 2001, the Ukrainian foundation had already received over half a million applications. By November 2003, when the UNF announced the completion of the first instalment payments, it had approved 469,990 applications and rejected 17,835 – about four per cent.42 As many as 186,000 applicants – 114,000 women and 72,000 men – died before the second instalment had been paid. Hence almost forty per cent of beneficiaries received only the first part (i.e. sixty-five per cent) of their compensation; their legal successors – immediate surviving relatives – received the remaining thirty-five per cent.43 When the UNF presented its final calculation in 2005, it had paid a first instalment of €563 million to some 472,000 people and a second instalment of €302 million to 470,000 people. In total, it issued payments amounting to €865 million.44 Thus the Ukrainian foundation compensated the largest proportion of beneficiaries in the former Soviet Union; twice as many as Russia and three times as many as Belarus.45 Numbering some 260,000, forced labourers in industry and the public sector presented by far the largest group of victims, followed by the roughly 170,000 forced labourers in agriculture and the private

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sector. The group of concentration camp and ghetto prisoners was distinctly smaller, numbering some 13,600, as was that of detainees in other places of confinement, which totalled some 400. The material importance of these payments, ranging from €500 to €7,700, is obvious compared to the average wage and pension in Ukraine: in 2004, the average monthly wage was about €83 and an average pension, a mere €39. In 2005, the subsistence minimum was calculated to be €70 per month.46 Food prices in Ukraine are only slightly lower than in western European countries such as Germany, and some foodstuffs imported from the EU are distinctly more expensive. Medical treatment for common conditions and diseases afflicting the elderly typically costs between €30 and €80.47 Nevertheless, and despite the country’s minimal public healthcare and old-age welfare provisions, beneficiaries often gave priority to supporting other members of their families, on whom they were extremely dependent. One beneficiary from Moldova, for example, who had been forced to work in a cement factory as a young girl, wrote: ‘The first money that I received, 65 per cent of the total DM 4,300 [€2,457], I spent immediately on the house where I live so that later nobody can say: go away, make room for us and so on.’48 The majority of the surviving Ukrainian forced labourers were women aged between 78 and 82 at the time of receiving their payments. They had already outlived the average life expectancy in Ukraine of 74 for women and 63 for men.49 Besides the female tendency to live longer than their male peers, the greater number of female beneficiaries can also be attributed to the fact that more women than men were deported from Ukraine to perform forced labour during the Second World War. With most able-bodied Ukrainian males serving in the Red Army, the Nazi authorities exploited Ukrainian females all the more to pursue their propagandist, ideological policy of protecting German women from industrial employment and heavy agricultural and domestic work.50 How the aspect of gender influenced Nazi deportation policies – on an ideological and practical scale – has to be explored further, as well as specific forms of violence in National-Socialist society against (foreign) women. Returning home, Ukrainian women were discriminated against in Soviet filtration camps, regarded as traitors just for the fact of being a woman in German captivity, opprobriated as ‘secondary’ and often raped.51

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Experiences of Suffering Translated into ‘Benefits’ The first step for former victims seeking to credibly prove their entitlement to compensation payments was to remember. The second was to fill out the application questionnaire. In the 1990s, applicants were required to complete forms several pages long with many detailed questions. Very little space was left for freely written entries. Applicants to the second compensation programme, in contrast, had just one side of questions to complete but were able to attach a distinctly larger batch of documents, including declarations, archival notices of confirmation and letters. The new form did not carry many questions to be answered, neither did it leave much space for applicants to describe their stories in detail – a process which was frequently triggered only by appeals proceedings and continued over countless letters. Moreover, the application form included a waiver for applicants to sign, renouncing any claim to future compensation. Although the disclaimer did not become legally effective until signatories had received the total amount of compensation they were entitled to, the act of signing it nevertheless required them to place considerable trust in the authorities, and precisely this trust had been shaken following the radical changes of the transformation years. Many applicants were obviously reluctant to renounce all future claims before they had even received the first, not to mention the second instalment of the compensation they were entitled to.52 One applicant therefore supplemented the notice of disclaimer with her own handwritten qualifier: ‘On receiving the compensation from the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ in its entirety I renounce all claims in the future extending beyond the frame of the Foundation Law.’53 Both the compensation payment scheme of the 1990s and that from 2001 unleashed a flood of letters from former persecutees. Complaints, enquiries and requests for aid were sent to the UNF, the German foundation, the German chancellor and foreign minister, the president of Ukraine, members of the Verkhovna Rada and newspaper editors and journalists.54 Most of the letters from the period 1997 to 1998 contained general enquiries. From 2001, however, letters were written asking about specific details of the payment process, describing the authors’ fates and in some cases protesting against the Ukrainian foundation’s decisions. Enquiries and complaints to the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ also contained complaints about the UNF. These letters usually ended, and sometimes also began, with descriptions of the authors’ illnesses, disabilities or generally difficult financial

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and personal circumstances. The authors pointed out their acute need to emphasize the urgency of the matter and urge the addressees to act quickly. Many of the letters were written on rough sheets of paper torn from simple notebooks – their very appearance illustrated the poverty behind them. But they also illustrated the continuation of a long cultural tradition of petitioning the authorities. It was apparent not only from the clumsy handwriting but also from the language the letters were written in that the authors were not experienced letterwriters. Most used a conversational tone, reflecting the local peculiarities of Ukraine’s new national language. Some of them even alternated between Russian and Ukrainian. The many hardships that elderly people in Ukraine faced were made drastically clear by these letters. Often the authors were driven by dire financial need to write to the UNF or the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. One former forced labourer, for example, wrote to ask that his compensation payment be speeded up: I am ninety years old, very ill, on my own, the neighbours look after me, my pension is small and not enough for medication, I have people to pay too, I need money for the funeral, winter is coming and I haven’t got any money to buy wood. I live off people’s charity. I would like to receive the money that Germany is paying back while I am still alive so that I can thank some good people and so that they give me a dignified burial.55

In their letters, the former forced labourers interpreted their lives as chains of connecting events, from working for no reward during the war to illness and disability in old age. Many criticized the amount of compensation as too small, often in the light of the belief that others had suffered less during the war. Forced labour in agriculture, especially, was widely felt to have been less hard than forced labour in industry. This perception even influenced the allocation of funds. While in the 1990s the same small amount was paid to compensate forced labour both in industry and in agriculture, a greater distinction was now made: €2,200 for the former versus €700 for the latter. In the 1990s, some former forced labourers had opted not to give precise details of their war experiences, preferring to accept the same small amount as their neighbours in the village rather than arousing suspicions of having worked for the enemy in industry. The second compensation programme, however, required applicants to retell their life stories and the details of their persecution and support them with relevant documents. The Ukrainian foundation intended to provide DM 1,500 (€767) to each former forced labourer in agriculture and child deported along with his or her parents or born during deportation. Neither of these

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victim groups had been taken into account when the ceiling for the Ukrainian share of the endowment fund had been determined. The UNF now had to find the money by economizing in other areas, and decided to reduce the amount for forced labour in industry from DM 5,000 (€2,556) to DM 4,300 (€2,199). Many applicants consequently accused the Ukrainian foundation of wilfully cutting the sum that had been allotted them ‘by Germany’ to benefit the forced labourers in agriculture, who in their opinion had suffered far less than they had. Their resentment grew when they learned that the Belarusian foundation was adhering to the statutory DM 5000. The measure launched another flood of letters, protesting that the Ukrainian foundation had taken the authors’ rightful money to give to the former agricultural workers. One example contains the following lines: I do not agree, why do you take 250 euros away from us and promise to give it to those who worked for a master [khoziaĭn] [in agriculture]. They didn’t live in these conditions: Balanda [prison food], they weren’t poor and they had day release – and I was taken to work under guard [konvoĭ] for almost three years.56

Over the course of the 1990s, the Soviet healthcare system had gradually disintegrated, leaving especially older former Nazi persecutees struggling under the burden of illness and disability. Their letters frequently contained descriptions of their poor state of health in old age which they realized as a consequence of the health damages they sustained during the Second World War – their actual reason for writing. In retrospect, their past lives formed a narrative of continued suffering that started with the sudden end of their adolescence when they were deported: I sent you all the necessary documents, which confirm that I am an eligible claimant under Form G, because I lost the ability to work, I suffered throughout my youth and am still suffering today. I could not take up better work to get a better pension. … came back from Germany with tuberculosis, they operated on me and I stayed a second-class invalid all my life.57

The main concern expressed in many letters was the authors’ need for medical care and nursing assistance in their old age as compensation for the damages they had suffered to their health during the war. An especially tragic fate is conveyed by the letters written by victims of sterilization, who benefited neither from public old-age assistance nor from family networks: To the President of Ukraine, Leonid D. Kuchma. … I am a former underage inmate of the most terrible fascist camp Auschwitz II, writing to make an urgent request for aid … to receive a monthly compensation in

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DM for the loss of my health. In 1942 I was 13 years old, … endless medical experiments in the years 1943–1944 destroyed my health, the most valuable thing in my life – to be a woman, to be a mother, they rewarded me with the most terrible punishment for a person – the loneliness, now I am 70 years old and cannot expect material or moral support from anyone, I can’t go into a home for the elderly because the old women there remind me of the female prisoners … waiting to die, my only hope lies in strangers and I need money for that.58

An especially insidious fate was suffered by the ‘blood donor children’, who were kept in hospitals for months on end to be exploited as living blood banks. They suffered the consequences of this abuse their whole lives. They clearly identified their contemporary health problems as direct consequences of the damage they sustained to their organs and nervous systems under Nazi rule. But they still faced the challenge of finding the medical and documentary evidence to prove this connection in order to receive the DM 1,500 compensation from the Ukrainian foundation. Many letters to the Ukrainian partner organization and the German Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ were written collectively. In many cases, complaints and enquiries were written by the children, relatives or neighbours of former persecutees on their behalf. One example is a letter by some three former Ostarbeiters from Kharkov to the German foreign minister, conveying their comments on and suggestions for improving the Foundation Act. With astonishing self-assurance, they threatened to take their case ‘to the international organization for the protection of human rights’ if they received a ­negative response: the former victims, not their grandchildren or children, need the compensation … We ask that you help the Ostarbeiter in industry to receive compensation to the amount of DM 10,000–12,000 and an obligatory payment in the year 2000 of 100 per cent. Words should not be different from actions. The good thing that Germany started should be ended well.59

The Ukrainian letter-writers were aware that the responsibility for approving or rejecting applications had been delegated to the Ukrainian partner organization, and the relationship between them and their national institutions – in a country that had only recently become ­independent – was reflected in their letters. Hence they are also testimony to a particular historical mentality: the authors on the one hand resolutely demand ‘fair compensation’ from their political representatives while at the same time adhering to paternalistic patterns of communication in terms of the letters’ form and structure, which start with a complaint and end with a threat. The long wait for

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compensation prompted many, though by no means all, former victims to take independent action and to articulate the needs arising from their personal histories with surprising confidence. Although the majority of these letters read like appeals to an authority the authors have no influence on, the very practice of invoking the authorities is itself a manifestation of the authors’ power to act.

The Search for Evidence In order to credibly prove that they had performed forced labour, applicants embarked on odysseys that often lasted several years and could only be mastered with the help of relatives, neighbours or fellow members of a victims’ association. The former chairman of a Kiev district organization of the USVŽF prisoners’ association later described the joint search for evidence and the professionalism and standing that they personally gained by acting as advisors: The prisoners came to me at this table and said things like: ‘I was born in Berlin.’ – ‘Well, where are your documents?’ – ‘I don’t have any documents.’ – ‘How do you know you were born in Berlin?’ – ‘My mum told me. My mum lives here in her district [raĭon]. Here is the document to confirm my mother was in Germany and I’ve got a document saying that I was born in Chernigov just when she was in Germany.’ Eighty people came here. In the beginning I didn’t know what to do. Then I found out what to do, we wrote petitions to the courts, to state organizations. … I even called Arolsen from this telephone and said: there’s someone sitting here who doesn’t have any documents, please send me something. They say: please apply in writing. I say: I can’t apply in writing any more, it’s already the end of the year, it’s very urgent, we beg you. And they say, alright, and after three days they phone back and send me the document. Here is my fax machine and they sent me the documents. I started to work more seriously with those people.60

The search for a document to confirm an applicant’s deportation, forced labour or imprisonment often led to further bureaucratic hurdles. In many cases, the birth date or name entered in the document was wrong; Ukrainian names were often purposefully Russianized; first names and birth dates were changed. The applicants found themselves once again confronted with German bureaucracy and its need for precise personal identification. To some, their lives seemed to become condensed in their memories into one pivotal moment, as if they could have known to pay more attention to their details being correct when they were deported: ‘I am sending you additional information about my work in Germany in the briquette factory. … They changed our name in Wittenstein, I

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became K. Alësha D., born 1926, I tried not to let on that I was born in 1924, I didn’t think it was important.’61 During the search for documentary proof, there were regular conflicts between the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and the regional departments of the Ukrainian National Foundation. The German side struggled to persuade Ukrainian staff to apply ‘authentication’ practices when assessing individual entitlement. According to the head of the supervisory team in Ukraine, the reluctance of local staff to do so was partly due to a fundamental lack of trust between authorities and citizens – a legacy of the Soviet era.62 Consequently, the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ felt obliged to teach the Ukrainian staff to develop a ‘service mentality’ towards their clientele, since they represented a public authority. But mistrust towards the Ukrainian citizens applying for compensation was only one of the reasons why so few applications were deemed generally credible. Another reason was the lack of resources and established procedures for checking the credibility of applications. Applicants often failed to produce convincing written accounts of their histories until appeal proceedings were underway and only then remembered the details that made their stories credible. In addition, applicants and the commission of experts alike acted on the assumption that the Germans were especially fastidious and would only accept ‘hard’ evidence. This prejudice stemmed from a common Russian-Soviet stereotype image of Germany: ‘The Germans are Germans; you have to be on their list to get a document. … The Germans are making fun of us. They make the kind of requirements for evidence that many can’t prove it; they can’t get any documents because they know that not all the documents were kept.’63 The Ukrainian foundation’s claim processing was monitored in a number of spot checks carried out by German ‘supervisory teams’. Paradoxically, according to a later account by the head of the supervisory team, one of its main tasks was urging the Ukrainian partner organization ‘not to be so hard-hearted’. But this account contrasts with reports on the supervisory team’s conduct, at least during their initial checks. The supervisors meticulously queried one in ten applications, usually because they did not accept the validity of the signature.64 Certainly, on account of their advanced age, many applicants had had other family members sign the form for them. Moreover, since many decisions were made orally, the supporting documents that the supervisory team expected to be attached did not exist in many cases.65 As an institution, the supervisory team corresponded with the stereotypical image of fastidious Germans. The Ukrainian commission of experts’

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Illustration 7.2 Some applicants resorted to making their own documents, such as this sketch of the Ostarbeiter camp attached to a briquette factory, which an applicant enclosed with her appeal after receiving a negative response from the International Tracing Service (author photo). Oleksia D.K. to UNF, 20 July 2002, UNF Letter Archive (2002).

initial reaction was to try and convey the impression of being especially incorruptible by presenting all the cases of fraud they had found to the Germans.66 The two sides only gradually realized that they needed to cooperate to develop a procedure from scratch that could never aspire to definitiveness in view of the complexity of applicants’ histories and the range of factors to be assessed.

Limits and Denied Compensation Jews and Roma who had survived Nazi occupation in hiding but could not provide proof of imprisonment were not entitled to compensation in Ukraine. The Ukrainian side insisted to the end of the programme that this victim group of some 9,000–10,000 people had not been apportioned a share of the fund because the German side had failed to take them into account during negotiations. The German side, meanwhile, pointed out that the Ukrainians had some scope for making their own decisions on the allocation of funds by means of

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the statutory option clause.67 Russia and Belarus, in contrast, apportioned a share of their funds to this victim group. So while formerly persecuted Jews and Roma who had survived in hiding in Moscow or Minsk received compensation, those who had gone underground in Kiev did not. The tragic repercussions of this decision, the grounds for which were impossible to appreciate from a victim’s point of view, are illustrated by the following letter of complaint written by an Ukrainian Jew who was orphaned in 1941 and taken in by a local family. After his pregnant mother was shot dead, he survived the war in constant fear of being discovered on account of his Yiddish-tinged Ukrainian pronunciation and the fact that he was circumcised: Because I, a Jew, could be murdered by any occupying German or local, this was dangerous for me. … Had I not stumbled into this hellish state machinery for destroying the Jewish population in 1941 but a bit later, when concentration camps and ghettos already existed, I would have gained much more from it … would have had the following advantages: 1. Under guard of the German Reich (accompanied by soldiers) I would have been sent to a concentration camp together with my mother and sister … My mother would have cared for me. … 9. I would not have had to prove to the Ukrainian foundation that I am a victim of fascism as the German state would have long since inscribed me in the honourable list of concentration camp prisoners and left me a personal number on my clothing or even on my body for the rest of my life … that number, especially on the body, is a different matter! It would have satisfied any official as proof enough.68

Another group that was categorically excluded from the scheme was that of Soviet prisoners of war.69 They perceived it as an incomprehensible injustice that Germany did not admit any ‘moral obligation’ to make a ‘humanitarian gesture’ of compensation to them, too. Such omissions prompted many enquiries and complaints by former victims whose applications were rejected. Since only prisoners of war who could prove they had been confined in a concentration camp were entitled to compensation, they started to reassess their histories in a new light. It was especially perplexing for these applicants to find that prisoner of war camps for Soviet prisoners, where inhumane conditions had prevailed, were not accepted in the same category as what were generally termed ‘concentration camps’. For some applicants, it was equally difficult to understand why escape from a prisoner of war camp was regarded as a heroic act in the Soviet Union but did not entitle the escapee to compensation under the present scheme. Only those escaped prisoners of war who had subsequently been forced to

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perform forced labour as civilians were entitled to compensation under the Foundation Law.

Conclusion The process of paying compensation to former forced labourers in Ukraine can be assessed on a number of levels, from the transnational cooperation and diplomacy it involved to the practical, local processes it triggered in Ukraine. The preliminary negotiations and the subsequent implementation of the Foundation Law in Ukraine took place in the light of certain experiences and expectations, which stemmed in part from the first compensation programme of the 1990s and in part from the specifics of a changing memorial culture – within a rapidly changing social context.70 In the process of searching for evidence and processing appeals, a plethora of new sources emerged – letters, personal memories, information on places of confinement and persecution practices – which await investigation and promise to add new dimensions to our knowledge of the Second World War in Ukraine.71 On the German side, the compensation process had accompanied a learning process about the complexity of Nazi persecution in Ukraine, the extent of which had hitherto not been known. On the Ukrainian side, the meagre outcome of the preliminary negotiations caused the international community to overlook Ukraine among the group of historical European victim nations.72 This in turn prevented the West from fully acknowledging the new Ukrainian nation as an equal, democratic state. Ukraine’s demands were not objectively dealt with precisely because it was not perceived as a significant, independent partner in international politics, alongside Russia and Poland. Instead, its demands were evaluated as ‘excessive’ from the start. The compensation programme administered by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ in Ukraine took place during a phase of radical change in social policy. In 2000, under the new Prime Minister Jushchenko, the economy of Ukraine was comprehensively reformed. Following the western European model of the ‘active welfare state’, the welfare system was graded to correspond with personal means, and the blanket old-age allowance was abandoned in favour of pensions aligned to last-earned wages. This further increased the burden on the elderly whose modest pensions had already shrunk due to inflation.73 Though not connected to these reforms, the compensation programme acted as a catalyst for action in this socio-political environment. In order to prove their

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entitlement, applicants had to be extremely agile. Most could only meet the requirements with the help of relatives, neighbours or veterans’ organizations, making huge physical and mental demands on the former persecutees. They contacted institutions, administrations and even authorities in Germany and travelled across Ukraine to apply for passports, find witnesses, inspect documents in archives or personally submit their applications. The fact that almost forty per cent of the Ukrainians entitled to compensation died before receiving the second instalment retrospectively demonstrates the urgency of the Verkhovna Rada’s warning to the Bundestag that ‘we cannot allow the words of apology to sound only on gravestones’.74 In the event, there was no symbolic gesture of ‘words of apology’, but the material gesture of compensation at least enabled many Ukrainian persecutees to pay for their funerals and help those who survived them.

Julia Landau is Curator at the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, responsible for research and documentation concerning the history of the ‘Soviet Special Camp No. 2’, 1945–50. Her research interests include the history of National Socialism, Stalinism in the Soviet Union and the Soviet occupation in post-war Germany. She is the author of ‘Wir bauen den großen Kuzbass!’ Bergarbeiteralltag im Stalinismus (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 2012).

Notes  1. The present chapter (translated from German) will use the customary English spelling for place names and personal names, where applicable, and the scholarly transliteration system in other cases.  2. Erhard R. Wiehn, Babij Jar 1941: Das Massaker deutscher Exekutionskommandos an der jüdischen Bevölkerung von Kiew 60 Jahre danach zum Gedenken (Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre, 2001), 21. This estimate is based on statements by the prisoners of war who were made to cremate the victims’ corpses in August/September 1943. See also Ilja M. Levitas, Babiĭ Yar: Kniga Pamjati (Kyïv: Izdat. „Stal“, 2005), 20.  3. Nick Baron, ‘Remaking Soviet Society: The Filtration of Returnees from Nazi Germany, 1944–49’, in Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (eds), Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands 1945–50 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 91–92; Katrin Boeckh, Stalinismus in der Ukraine: Die Rekonstruktion des sowjetischen Systems nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007), 295.

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 4. Ulrike Goeken-Haidl, Der Weg zurück: Die Repatriierung sowjetischer Zwangsarbeiter und Kriegsgefangener während und nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Essen: Klartext, 2006), 443.  5. Ibid., 432.  6. Tetjana V. Pastushenko, ‘Spadok viĭny: Polityko-pravove stanovishche repatriantiv u povoennomu radjans’komu suspiľstvi’, Ukraiĭns’kiĭ istorichniĭ zhurnal 3 (2010): 117.  7. Ibid., 111, 117.  8. Goeken-Haidl, Der Weg zurück, 465; Pavel M. Poljan and Zhanna A. Zajonchkovskaja (eds), ‘Ostarbeiter in Deutschland und daheim: Ergebnisse einer Fragebogenanalyse’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 41 (1993): 547–61.  9. Baron, ‘Remaking Soviet Society’, 91. 10. Frank Golczewski, ‘Ukraine: Bürgerkrieg und Resowjetisierung’, in Ulrich Herbert and Axel Schildt (eds), Kriegsende in Europa: Vom Beginn des deutschen Machtzerfalls bis zur Stabilisierung der Nachkriegsordnung 1944– 1948 (Essen: Klartext, 1998), 89–99. 11. Gisela Schwarze (ed.), Die Sprache der Opfer: Briefzeugnisse aus Russland und der Ukraine zur Zwangsarbeit als Quelle der Geschichtsschreibung (Essen: Klartext, 2005); Constanze Werner, Kiew-München-Kiew: Schicksale ukrainischer Zwangsarbeiter (Munich: Buchendorfer, 2000). 12. Tanja Penter, ‘Arbeiten für den Feind in der Heimat: Der Arbeitseinsatz in der besetzten Ukraine 1941–1944’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Zwangsarbeit im Nationalsozialismus in den besetzten Gebieten 1 (2004): 65–94; Mark Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939–1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001). 13. Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organisation und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (Munich/ Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1996); Thomas Sandkühler, ‘Endlösung’ in Galizien: Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz, 1941–1944 (Bonn: Dietz, 1996); Hermann Kaienburg, ‘Jüdische Arbeitslager an der “Straße der SS”’, 1999: Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 1 (1996): 13–39; Epilogue Heim, in Eliyahu Yones, Die Straße nach Lemberg: Zwangsarbeit und Widerstand in Ostgalizien 1941–1944 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1999) 233–34. Yones’ memoirs were published in 1960 in Hebrew. 14. Eric C. Steinhart, The Holocaust and the Germanization of Ukraine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010); Tanja Penter, Kohle für Stalin und Hitler: Arbeiten und Leben im Donbass 1929 bis 1953 (Essen: Klartext, 2010); Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower (eds), The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008); Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, MA: Balknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004); Dieter Pohl, ‘Schauplatz Ukraine: Der Massenmord an den Juden im Militärverwaltungsgebiet und im Reichskommissariat 1941–43’,

204 • Julia Landau

15.

16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

in Norbert Frei, Sybille Steinbacher and Patrick Wagner (eds), Ausbeutung, Vernichtung, Öffentlichkeit: Neue Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Lagerpolitik (Munich: Saur, 2000), 135–74. Andrij Portnov and Tetjana Portnova, ‘Der Preis des Sieges: Der Krieg und die Konkurrenz der Veteranen in der Ukraine’, Osteuropa 60 (2010): 27; Wilfried Jilge, ‘Nationalukrainischer Befreiungskampf: Die Umwertung des Zweiten Weltkriegs in der Ukraine’, Osteuropa 58 (2008): 167–86. Golczewski, ‘Ukraine’, 94. Tetjana V. Pastushenko, Ostarbaitery z Kiĭivshchyny: Verbuvannĭa, prymusova pracĭa, repatriacia (1942–1953) (Kyïv: Institut Istorï Ukraïny, 2009); Alla Kravchenko and Sergiĭ Baturin (eds), Ukraiĭns’ki neviľniki treťego reĭkhu: Minule i suchasnisť (Lviv: Kal´varia, 2005). Herbert Küpper, ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion’, Osteuropa 46 (1996): 645–47; Alla Kravchenko and Sergiĭ Baturin (eds), Ukraiĭns’ki neviľniki treťego reĭkhu: Minule i suchasnisť (Lviv: Kal´varia, 2005), 87–89; Igor Luchnikov, ‘Ansprüche aus Zwangsarbeit seitens der Geschädigten – Ukraine: Die Tätigkeit der ukrainischen nationalen Stiftung “Verständigung und Versöhnung”’, in Klaus Barwig, Günter Saathoff and Nicole Weyde (eds), Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit: Rechtliche, historische und politische Aspekte (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998), 179–85. Pavel Poljan, Zhertvy dvuch diktatur: Zhizn‘, trud, unizhenie i smert‘ sovetskikh voennoplennykh i ostarbaĭterov na chuzhbine i na rodine, (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 663–66. Heiko Pleines, ‘Demokratisierung ohne Demokraten: Die Oligarchen in der ukrainischen Politik’, Osteuropa 60 (2010): 124–25, 131. Levermann, Wissenschaftlicher Dienst des Deutschen Bundestages, Abt. Haushalt und Finanzen, 12 February 1998 to Hans-Heinrich Nolte, in Mizhnarodni peregovory 1997–1998, C. 1, UNF Archive. October 2000, EVZ Archive, 501.16 EVZ-UKR PO. Report Lushnikov to Ukrainian cabinet (Kabmin), 18 December 1997, Mizhnarodni peregovory 1997–1998, C. 1, UNF Archive. Ibid. ‘Überhöht’, guidelines for discussions, 3 December 1999, in EVZ Archives, ASSI, 4.2. Litvinov, 30 August 1999, O kolichestve potentsialnykh poluchateleĭ ­denezhnykh sredstv iz promyshlennogo i Federal´nogo fondov FRG – grazhdan Ukrainy, Mizhnarodni peregovory z FRN shchodo vyplat ­zhertvam natsizmu 1999 rik, Tom II, UNF Archive. Lambsdorff to Steinmeier, 27 August 1999, EVZ Archives, ASSI, 4.1, September–November 1999. Conversations between Graf Lambsdorff and Eizenstat, November– February 2000, Washington, 26 November 1999, EVZ Archives, ASSI, 4.2. Guidelines for conversations, 3 November 1999, folder 3: conversations Graf Lambsdorff and Gentz with Russian delegation in Berlin, 6 December 1999, EVZ Archives, ASSI, 4.2.

Forced Labourer Compensation in Ukraine • 205

30. Sixth round of conversations, 16–17 November 1999, Bonn, folder 2: conversations Graf Lambsdorff with Eizenstat, Washington, 26 November 1999, EVZ Archives, ASSI, 4.2. 31. Statement before the Bundestag Committee for Internal Affairs presented by Bartosz Jalowiecki on behalf of CEE States’ Delegations, 7 June 2000, Mizhnarodni peregovory z FRN shchodo vyplat zhertvam natsizmu 2000 rik, Part II, UNF Archive. 32. Cf. Zakon Ukraїny pro zhertvy natsists’kykh peresliduvan’, Vidomosti Verchovnoї Radi Ukraїny, 23 March 2000, No. 24, st. 182, http://zakon2. rada.gov.ua/laws/show/1584-14 (accessed 30 September 2016). 33. In the process of implementing the compensation programme, however, a subcategory was eventually established that enabled the UNF to take others into account who were hitherto not eligible under the law but could provide evidence of their detainment in a concentration camp, ghetto or other place of confinement that was recognized by the board of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. 34. ‘The Law on the Creation of a Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”’, printed in Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff (eds) on behalf of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and other Personal Injuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 181–82. 35. Foundation Act, Paragraph 9 (1), ibid., 177. 36. Minutes of the board of trustees: increase of first rate, third session of board of trustees, 2 November 2000, EVZ Archives, 105.00. 37. Minutes of the board of trustees: increase of maximum amounts, first rate Ukraine, fourth session of advisory board, 24–25 January 2001, EVZ Archives, 105.00. 38. Talk by Saathoff at the fourth session of the board of trustees, 24–25 January 2001, EVZ Archives, 105.00. 39. ‘Es ist unzulässig, dass die Worte der Entschuldigung nur an den Grabsteinen erklingen’, letter from Verkhovna Rada to Deutscher Bundestag, 13 March 2001, EVZ Archives, 502.16. 40. Minutes of the board of trustees: Motion Volker Beck, sixth session of board of trustees, 12 June 2001, EVZ Archives, 105.00. 41. Interview with Olena Bryk, former director of the Lviv branch, 17 July 2009. One of the members of staff in this branch contracted severe pneumonia and died two years later. 42. Minutes of the board of trustees, 19 November 2003, report of the Ukrainian National Foundation (UNF) on claims processing, fourteenth session of the board of trustees, 3–4 December 2003, EVZ Archives, 105.00. 43. UNF database. 44. Minutes of the board of trustees, report of directorate, eighteenth session of board of trustees, 19 January 2006, EVZ Archives, 105.00. 45. The UNF was also responsible for payments to the neighbouring Republic of Moldova, from where it approved 1,656 applications. The unstable political situation, with Russia controlling the border region of Transnistria

206 • Julia Landau

46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

between Moldova and Ukraine, complicated the logistics of issuing payments. Sabine Erdmann-Kutnevic, Studie zur sozialen Situation älterer Menschen in Belarus, Russland und der Ukraine (Berlin: Fonds “Erinnerung und Zukunft”, 2005), 45 (pdf-download: http://www.stiftung-evz.de/service/publikationen/studien-evaluationen/print.html?L=0) (accessed 30 September 2016); www.worldbank.org.ua. Erdmann-Kutnevic, Studie zur sozialen Situation, 50. E.S.Zh. to the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, 19 March 2001, EVZ Archives, 660.00/7052. Erdmann-Kutnevic, Studie zur sozialen Situation, 47. Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches (Bonn: Dietz, 1999), 55. Goeken-Haidl, Der Weg zurück, 389–90; Irina Scherbakowa, ‘Mündliche Zeugnisse zur Zwangsarbeit in Russland’, in Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld (eds), Hitlers Sklaven: Lebensgeschichtliche Analysen zur Zwangsarbeit im internationalen Vergleich (Vienna: Böhlau, 2008), 252. Record: Protocol 12a, 540.01/16. In the parallel scheme implemented by the Austrian foundation, beneficiaries were required to sign the disclaimer on receiving their payments in the bank. Inspection record 10.1.2002, EVZ Archives, 540.01/16. The record contains the note: ‘The relevance of this addition remains to be clarified.’ They are archived in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, hereafter referred to as UNF Letter Archive. I am very grateful to Dr Maryna Dubyk, Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, for providing access to the holdings and answering many questions. G.G.CH. to UNF, 2 September 2001, UNF Letter Archive (2002). M.F. to the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, 15 October 2003, Ex-Post-Prüfung, EVZ Archives, 661.16/1. Zh.E.S. to the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, 19 March 2001, EVZ Archives, 660.00/7052. O.N.L. to Kuchma, 14 February 1998, UNF Letter Archive (1998). Aleksandr T. to the director of public prosecutions (Generalstaatsanwalt), 5 February 1998, UNF Letter Archive (1998). Interview with Svetlana Z., 29 March 2009. Oleksia D.K. to UNF, 20 July 2002, UNF Letter Archive (2002). Interview U.G., 26 April 2010. Vitaliĭ N.K. to Luchnikov, 29 July 2002, UNF Letter Archive (2002). Check reports: inspection record Ukraine, UK-1 T-1 P, 18.6.2001, EVZ Archives, 540.01/16; inspection record Ukraine, second tranche, first inspection, 23–27 July 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.01/16. Concerned about not paying money to ‘dead souls’, the German ambassador enquired: ‘how we can get a sign of life from the applicants’? In the end, the money was transferred to Ukraine with a note of blocking and not issued until the right signature had been presented. Inspection records Ukraine, second tranche, first inspection, 23–27 July 2001, EVZ Archives, 540.01/16.

Forced Labourer Compensation in Ukraine • 207

65. Check reports: inspection records Ukraine, UK-10 T–1 P, 8 January 2002, EVZ Archives, 540.01/16. 66. Check reports: inspection records, Ukraine, UK-15 T-1 P, 6 October 2003, EVZ Archives, 540.01/16. 67. Lushnikov to Jansen, 3 December 2001: ‘should the number of eligible persons be increased, the German side will have to solve the problem of providing Ukraine with additional funds’, EVZ Archives, 501.16. 68. Grigoriĭ P. to the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, 16 August 2001, EVZ Archives, 660.00/11854. 69. The Berlin-based civic association Kontakte-Контакты e.V. deserves mention for its fundraising work and efforts towards closing these gaps and supporting Soviet prisoners of war and Jews who survived the war in hiding (http://www.kontakte-kontakty.de/deutsch/ns-opfer/buergerengagement/juedische_ueberlebende.php) (accessed 30 September 2016). 70. Pastushenko also notes that the German ‘humanitarian payments’ triggered the acceleration of these processes of change in memorial culture and their effect on historiography, in Pastushenko, Ostarbaitery z Kiĭivshchyny, 5. 71. Overview of camps and prisons in Maryna G. Dubyk (ed.), Dovidnyk pro tabory, tjurmy ta hetto na okupovanij terytoriï Ukraïny (1941–1944): Handbuch der Lager, Gefängnisse und Ghettos auf dem besetzten Territorium der Ukraine (1941–44) (Kyïv: Deržavnyı˘ Komitet Archivi Ukraïny, 2000). 72. From a Ukrainian perspective, the dissatisfactory outcome of the negotiations, especially in comparison with Poland, was mainly to be attributed to the negotiators’ lack of experience and tenacity, as well as their inexperience of democratic culture. See Oleksy V. Sviatun, ‘Ostarbaĭtery: Prymusova pracia v Nimechyni z chasiv Treťeho rejchu. Vyplata kompenzacy’, Polityka i čas 4 (2001): 59. 73. Sarah D. Phillips, Women’s Social Activism in the New Ukraine: Development and the Politics of Differentiation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008), 8. 74. Open letter from the Verkhovna Rada to the German Bundestag, 13 March 2001, EVZ Archives, 502.16.

Bibliography Baron, Nick. ‘Remaking Soviet Society: The Filtration of Returnees from Nazi Germany, 1944–49’, in Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (eds), Warlands: Population Resettlement and Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands 1945–50, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Berkhoff, Karel C. Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004. Boeckh, Katrin. Stalinismus in der Ukraine: Die Rekonstruktion des sowjetischen Systems nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007. Brandon, Ray, and Wendy Lower (eds). The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008.

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Dubyk, Maryna G. (ed.). Dovidnyk pro tabory, tjurmy ta hetto na okupovanij terytoriï Ukraïny (1941–1944). Handbuch der Lager, Gefängnisse und Ghettos auf dem besetzten Territorium der Ukraine (1941–1944), Kyïv: Deržavnyı˘ Komitet Archivi Ukraïny, 2000. Erdmann-Kutnevic, Sabine. Studie zur sozialen Situation älterer Menschen in Belarus, Russland und der Ukraine, Berlin: Fonds ‘Erinnerung und Zukunft’, 2005 [pdf-download: http://www.stiftung-evz.de/service/publikationen/ studien-evaluationen/print.html?L=0] [accessed 30 September 2016]. Goeken-Haidl, Ulrike. Der Weg zurück: Die Repatriierung sowjetischer Zwangsarbeiter und Kriegsgefangener während und nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, Essen: Klartext, 2006. Golczewski, Frank. ‘Ukraine: Bürgerkrieg und Resowjetisierung’, in: Ulrich Herbert and Axel Schildt (eds), Kriegsende in Europa: Vom Beginn des deutschen Machtzerfalls bis zur Stabilisierung der Nachkriegsordnung 1944–1948, Essen: Klartext, 1998, 89–99. Herbert, Ulrich. Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reichs, Bonn: Dietz, 1999. Jansen, Michael, and Günter Saathoff on behalf of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ (eds). ‘A Mutual Responsibility and a Moral Obligation’: The Final Report on Germany’s Compensation Programs for Forced Labor and Other Personal Injuries, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Jilge, Wilfried. ‘Nationalukrainischer Befreiungskampf: Die Umwertung des Zweiten Weltkriegs in der Ukraine’, Osteuropa 58 (2008): 167–86. Kaienburg, Hermann. ‘Jüdische Arbeitslager an der “Straße der SS”’, 1999.  Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 1 (1996): 13–39. Kravchenko, Alla, and Sergiĭ Baturin (eds). Ukraiĭns’ki neviľniki treťego reĭkhu: Minule i suchasnisť, Lviv: Kal´varia, 2005. Küpper, Herbert. ‘Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in den Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion’, Osteuropa 46 (1996): 639–56. Levitas, Ilja M. Babiĭ Yar: Kniga Pamjati, Kyïv: Izdat. ‘Stal’, 2005. Luchnikov, Igor. ‘Ansprüche aus Zwangsarbeit seitens der Geschädigten – Ukraine: Die Tätigkeit der ukrainischen nationalen Stiftung “Verständigung und Versöhnung”’ in Klaus Barwig, Günter Saathoff and Nicole Weyde (eds), Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit: Rechtliche, historische und politische Aspekte, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998, 179–85. Pastushenko, Tetjana V. ‘Spadok viĭny: Polityko-pravove stanovishche repatriantiv u povoennomu radjans’komu suspiľstvi‘, Ukraiĭns’kiĭ istorichniĭ zhurnal 3 (2010): 110–27. ———. Ostarbaitery z Kiĭivshchyny: Verbuvannĭa, prymusova pracĭa, repatriacia (1942–1953), Kyïv: Institut istorï Ukraïny, 2009. Penter, Tanja. ‘Arbeiten für den Feind in der Heimat: Der Arbeitseinsatz in der besetzten Ukraine 1941–1944’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Zwangsarbeit im Nationalsozialismus in den besetzten Gebieten 1 (2004): 65–94. ———. Kohle für Stalin und Hitler: Arbeiten und Leben im Donbass 1929 bis 1953, Essen: Klartext, 2010.

Forced Labourer Compensation in Ukraine • 209

Penter, Tanja, and Dmitrii Titarenko. ‘Local Memory on War, German Occupation and Postwar Years: An Oral History Project in the Donbass’, Cahiers du Monde russe 52(2–3) (2011): 475–97. ———. Opyt nacistskoj okkupacii v Donbasse: svidetel’stvujut očevidcy, Donec’k: Svit Knyhy, 2013. Phillips, Sarah D. Women’s Social Activism in the New Ukraine: Development and the Politics of Differentiation, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008. Pleines, Heiko. ‘Demokratisierung ohne Demokraten: Die Oligarchen in der ukrainischen Politik’, Osteuropa 60 (2010): 123–34. Pohl, Dieter. ‘The Murder of Ukraine’s Jews under German Military Administration and in the Reich Commissariat Ukraine’, in: Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower (eds.), The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008, 23–76. ———. ‚Schauplatz Ukraine: ‘Der Massenmord an den Juden im Militär­ verwaltungsgebiet und im Reichskommissariat 1941–43’, in Norbert Frei, Sybille Steinbacher and Patrick Wagner (eds), Ausbeutung, Vernichtung, Öffentlichkeit: Neue Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Lagerpolitik, Munich: Saur, 2000, 135–74. ———. Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organisation und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens, Munich/ Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1996. Poljan, Pavel M., and Zhanna A. Zajonchkovskaja. ‘Ostarbeiter in Deutschland und daheim: Ergebnisse einer Fragebogenanalyse’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 41 (1993): 547–61. Poljan, Pavel. Deportiert nach Hause: Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im ‘Dritten Reich’ und ihre Repatriierung, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2001. ———. Ne po svoej vole... Istorija i geografija prinuditel’nych migracij v SSSR, Munich: Memorial, 2001. ———. Žertvy dvuch diktatur: žizn’, trud, uniženie i smert’ sovetskich voennoplennych i ostarbajterov na čužbine i na rodine, Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002. Portnov, Andrij, and Tetjana Portnova. ‘Der Preis des Sieges: Der Krieg und die  Konkurrenz der Veteranen in der Ukraine’, Osteuropa 60 (2010): 27–41. Sandkühler, Thomas. ‘Endlösung’ in Galizien: Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz, 1941–1944, Bonn: Dietz, 1996. Scherbakowa, Irina. ‘“Memorial” und “Opfer zweier Diktaturen”’, Ost-West 1 (2002): 12–19. ———. ‘Mündliche Zeugnisse zur Zwangsarbeit in Russland’, in Alexander von Plato, Almut Leh and Christoph Thonfeld (eds), Hitlers Sklaven: Lebensgeschichtliche Analysen zur Zwangsarbeit im internationalen Vergleich, Vienna: Böhlau, 2008, 241–54. Schwarze, Gisela (ed.). Die Sprache der Opfer: Briefzeugnisse aus Russland und der Ukraine zur Zwangsarbeit als Quelle der Geschichtsschreibung, Essen: Klartext, 2005. Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, New York: Basic Books, 2010.

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Spoerer, Mark. Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz: Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939–1945, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001. Steinhart, Eric C. The Holocaust and the Germanization of Ukraine, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Sviatun, Oleksy V. ‘Ostarbaĭtery. Prymusova pracia v Nimechyni z chasiv Treťeho rejchu. Vyplata kompenzacy’, Polityka i čas 4 (2001): 49–60. Werner, Constanze. Kiew–München–Kiew: Schicksale ukrainischer Zwangsarbeiter, Munich: Buchendorfer, 2000. Wiehn, Erhard R. Babij Jar 1941. Das Massaker deutscher Exekutionskommandos an der jüdischen Bevölkerung von Kiew 60 Jahre danach zum Gedenken, Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre, 2001. Yones, Eliyahu. Die Straße nach Lemberg: Zwangsarbeit und Widerstand in Ostgalizien 1941–1944, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1999.

8 Compensation for Nazi Forced Labour in Post-Soviet Russia and Belarus Tanja Penter

In Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, the forced labourer compensation payment programme administered by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ displayed not only a number of similarities but also some major differences. In all post-Soviet countries, the compensation programme coincided and interacted with general processes of political, economic and social transformation, but had a different domestic and foreign political significance for each. At the international negotiations preceding the launch of the programme, it was a salient concern of these nations to assert their positions in the European and post-Soviet power structure. In terms of society, the compensation programme became a factor in these countries’ radical redistribution and reorganization processes. Later, the compensation payments had a direct impact on the positioning of Nazi victims within their new social orders. The resulting new victim discourses therefore coincided to an extent with nation-building processes. Additionally, all three countries had previous experience of a compensation programme for former Nazi victims in the 1990s. Expectations were widely informed by and comparisons made with this previous programme. And as history began to be reinterpreted in a national light, the Soviet view of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ was more or less revised in all three successor states. As a result, memorial cultures developed and, to some extent, pluralized. Beyond these very similar contextual frameworks, however, the compensation programme assumed a number of distinct characteristics in each of the three post-Soviet states. The personal testimonies written by Nazi victims (mostly in the form of letters to the individual

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countries’ reconciliation foundations) in the course of applying for compensation testify to their divergent views of the compensation programme according to their national contexts. The political importance of remembering Nazi victims and compensating forced labourers was differently interpreted in each of the countries considered here. To some extent, this was reflected in the institutional structures, personnel policies and administrative cultures of the individual reconciliation foundations (later known as partner organizations of the German Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’), which were all tightly bound to their national governments. When it came to defining compensation categories and using the option clause, certain victim groups were prioritized over others, according to each state’s policy on the past. Moreover, the social and economic standing of former Nazi victims varied in each of the successor states of the Soviet Union. On a legal level, the injustice they had suffered and their status as victims (for example, whether equal to war veterans or not) was differently interpreted in each country. Moreover, the influence of democratic participation and civil society – elements such as victim discourses and victims’ associations, public opinion and a critical press – on nationbuilding processes varied distinctly in each of the post-Soviet states. All these factors also influenced the Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian partner organizations’ attitudes and approach to their cooperation with the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’. This chapter will consider the history of forced labourer compensation in Russia and Belarus from a comparative perspective and on three different levels. First, the history of each national reconciliation foundation will be examined, starting with their establishment in 1993 in the context of the first payment programme for former Nazi victims and ending with the completion of the second compensation payment programme and the dissolution of the foundations a few years later. Secondly, the social changes linked to the compensation programme will be investigated, and the repercussions that the payment programme had for national policies on the past considered. And thirdly, the personal views and perspectives of the claimants and Nazi victims themselves – those whose applications were successful and those who did not receive any compensation for whatever reason – will be examined. Their stories attest to some highly complex histories of persecution. The statutory compensation categories provided for by the German Foundation Law frequently conflicted with these realities and did not do them justice.

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The History of the Foundations in Russia and Belarus The national reconciliation foundations, set up in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia during the course of the first compensation programme, were to form the basis for all future compensation programmes. During the 1990s, they had gained initial experience of dealing with compensation for Nazi victims, collected data on potential beneficiaries and developed databases that later programmes could refer to. In parallel, former Nazi victims in the post-Soviet states had gained their first experiences of compensation and the foundations, which were to shape their expectations of the compensation payment programme to follow.1 The Belarusian Foundation Understanding and Reconciliation was initiated by the Belarusian Council of Ministers on 14 June 1993, in the course of international negotiations.2 It was, then, established prior to Alexander Lukashenko’s assumption of office as president of Belarus in summer 1994. Responsibility for the foundation was initially handed to a group of retired officers and members of a welfare committee for ex-military and state security service personnel.3 The foundation’s first chairman, Valentin Jakovlevič Gerasimov, who retained his post throughout, was one of the seven members of this workgroup. Gerasimov, born in Latvia in 1943, was a highly decorated colonel and political officer who had served in the Soviet army until the early 1990s. By placing former officers in charge of the foundation, the Belarusian government signalled the political importance it attached to the compensation programme, and it remained an important government project under the new president, Lukashenko. In the course of its work, the Belarusian foundation largely continued Soviet traditions in terms of institutional practice and Second World War remembrance, which were important elements of President Lukashenko’s authoritarian system of rule. Lukashenko was appointed president primarily because he promised a return to the old way of life in the USSR and aimed to reinstate the Soviet approach to history and symbolic politics, among other things. Still today, public awareness in Belarus is strongly rooted in the older generation’s Soviet socialization, not least because the country experienced its most significant industrial, cultural and economic upswing as part of the Soviet Union, where it rose to become a model republic.4 Under the watchful eyes of the president, the representatives of the Belarusian foundation worked under considerable political pressure. In the view of members of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, the Lukashenko regime’s ‘potential for repression and

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underlying terror’ had a decisive influence on the Belarusian foundation’s refusal to enter into a dialogue with the Germans. But while implementing the instructions from Berlin mostly without protest, it managed to take advantage of the lack of conflict to press through some key demands at strategic points.5 In Belarus, the first compensation payment programme in the 1990s was carried out professionally and reliably. This was not the case in Russia or Ukraine, where amounts of several millions were inexplicably lost from the funds. Moreover, the Belarusians, unlike the Russians, used the extensive database on Nazi victims created during the first compensation programme to compile convincing figures to support their estimated number of claims to the second compensation programme and suggest a financial ceiling. Thanks to their previous positive experience of cooperating on a compensation programme, the Belarusians enjoyed a certain credit of trust with the German negotiators that contrasted oddly with the Germans’ general mistrust of the political system in Belarus. At the international negotiations preceding the forced labour compensation programme in 1999 and 2000, the Belarusians kept a low profile, operating for the most part in conjunction with the other CEE delegations.6 It repeatedly signalled to the German side that it had no intention of instituting proceedings against German companies, despite the urging of American lawyers. Similarly, coverage of the negotiations in the Belarusian press was remarkably low-key.7 Separate talks were conducted only between the Germans and the politically influential Russians, not the Belarusians or Ukrainians. Still, the Belarusians were able to defend their interests with surprising aplomb when it came to negotiating the allocation of the programme’s funds. As far as the German foundation’s representatives were concerned, the Belarusians were particularly cooperative partners.8 Cooperation between the Russian partner organization and the staff of the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ proved considerably more difficult. Among the factors complicating their work was the legacy of the first compensation programme, during the course of which amounts of several millions simply disappeared from the Russian reconciliation foundation. The matter – and the question of who is culpable – has still not been cleared up. The Russian state, moreover, only reimbursed a fraction of the losses, leaving many claimants from Russia and the Baltic States bereft of compensation from the programme to this day. This state of affairs reflects the negligible political importance attached to forced labour compensation in Russia. While in Belarus the Lukashenko government was proud of its model forced labour compensation project, and in Ukraine compensation for Nazi

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victims was considered important enough for the government to reimburse all the losses from the first programme, in Russia under Yeltsin and, from 2000, under Putin it was regarded as having only marginal relevance. It was also symptomatic of the low priority assigned to the forced labour compensation programme in Russia that its reconciliation foundation struggled with ongoing problems with the premises in Moscow as well as personnel issues. The Russian partner organization was forced to move several times to find suitable premises that claimants could reach easily by public transport. It also went through a number of changes in leadership, starting with the dismissal of chairman Knyazev, whose reputation became tarnished when it was disclosed that millions had been lost from the first compensation programme. Alexander M. Sasonov, a lieutenant general and long-standing member of the security service, then took over for some months. While Sasonov had a command of English and plenty of experience of fighting international organized crime, he was ignorant of forced labour issues, as he himself freely admitted.9 The appointment in June 2001 of well-respected business manager Natal’ia Malysheva as chairperson marked a distinct improvement – at least in the unanimous opinion of the German foundation’s directors, trustees and staff. Malysheva, a qualified IT engineer and economist, had worked with Putin in the St Petersburg city government, where she had successfully directed a number of major urban projects and acted as advisor on regional and federal programmes. She also had relevant experience of cooperating with Germany on largescale projects. By appointing her to lead the Russian foundation, Putin seems to have signalled that he attached some importance, at least temporarily, to the forced labour compensation. Under her auspices, the payment process finally got underway and a basis of trust was established with the organization’s German colleagues. Malysheva left the foundation two years later, when she was appointed to the more senior post of deputy employment minister and subsequently of advisor to the chairman of the Russian Federation Council. Malysheva’s successor as chairperson of the Russian foundation was Andrei I. Voikov, a lawyer and expert on administration, who had been Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration under Yeltsin.10 However, by this time Voikov was severely ill and the appointment was little more than a retirement job for him. Although the Russian foundation was a public institution, and therefore less directly controlled by the government than the foundation in authoritarian-ruled Belarus, for example, various Russian ministries nevertheless interfered, sometimes heavily, in the work of the foundation.

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Some important decisions were made during the international negotiations in 1999 and 2000 which were to have a crucial impact on the compensation payment process in Russia later. Those concerning the coordination of the funding ceilings and Russian responsibility for claimants from the Baltic States, especially, transpired to have negative consequences for Nazi victims in the Russian foundation’s sphere of responsibility. The interests of Russian victims of Nazism were of marginal importance to the Russian negotiators. From the outset, they were far more concerned with asserting their international importance by, for example, fighting their perceived disadvantage when it came to the distribution of funds within the ‘Slavic camp’. Their primary concern was to assert Russia’s position as leader in the post-Soviet camp.11 Ironically, following the breakaway of Ukraine and Belarus, Russia could no longer claim to have suffered as many victims of Nazism as national myth maintained. Many of them were now defined as nationals of other Soviet successor states, contradicting the widespread belief that Russia had borne the heaviest burden of the Second World War. From the start, there was fierce rivalry between Ukraine and Russia over the allocation of funds. The Russian foundation left the negotiations with a relatively low financial ceiling (similarly to the IOM and the JCC), due primarily to poor preparation and their consequent lack of convincing figures. The Belarusians, in contrast, were able with foresight and diplomatic skill to negotiate latitude for more potential beneficiaries in categories A and B plus additional financial reserves for the option clause. Under the Foundation Law, funds were not to be redistributed once allocated, so the payment programme’s framework depended crucially upon the negotiating skill of the various players. However, over the course of the programme, it became increasingly clear to the Russian foundation that its financial ceiling was too low. Its subsequent demands for a belated increase were eventually met when its share of the funds was raised with interest accrued from the foundation endowment. At the preliminary negotiations, it was decided to adopt the arrangement used for the first compensation programme in 1993 and put Russia in charge of claims from Lithuania and Latvia once again, while Belarus was made responsible for claims from Estonia, and Moldavian claims were entrusted to Ukraine. This politically explosive decision was to have serious consequences and elicited fierce protests from the Baltic States.12 It offended Baltic national sensibilities to be answerable to Russian authorities, and Baltic claimants feared discrimination by the Russians. As a consequence of the tense relations between Russia and the Baltic States, the German foundation-led talks between Russia,

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Lithuania and Latvia over the programme’s administration were rife with conflict. In the eyes of Lithuanians and Latvians, and indeed Russians, the programme concerned more than just compensation for former victims of Nazism. It opened up a highly politically charged arena, both on a national and an international level, where questions of national identity, national positioning within post-Soviet Europe, and Stalinist crimes against Baltic citizens were raised.13 Belarus and Estonia, in contrast, were able to cooperate on a politically easier basis since relations between the two countries were historically less strained. The Belarusian foundation’s processing of claims from Estonia therefore ran smoothly. On account of the ongoing difficulties with the Russian foundation’s premises, its insufficient funding and frequent changes in leadership, and to some extent the lack of qualifications and experience of its staff, the programme in Russia initially progressed at a sluggish pace. The situation was exacerbated by cultural differences: much time in the early phase of the German-Russian cooperation was taken up with the struggle to communicate and find linguistic equivalents for formulations in documents such as contracts, minutes of negotiations, rules of procedure and economy plans. The two sides – aided by specialist translators – discussed these in extended bilingual correspondences. To the Russians’ apparent incomprehension, the Germans would not tolerate vague translations or formulations in this legally sensitive field.14 The payment practice in Russia, as in the other participating countries, was attended by an ongoing process of debate and negotiation. In contrast to the Belarusian foundation, which for the most part carried out its instructions from Berlin without protest, the Russian foundation staff did not accept the Germans’ role as mentors and frequently disagreed with them. In their internal memos, German foundation personnel often remarked on the Russian foundation’s obstinate refusal to comply with their instructions. At an early stage, the Russian foundation had proposed that the German procedures for processing claims and payments were far too complicated and slow, that the eight-month time limit for claims was far too short under the Russian circumstances, and that the application form was too problematic in view of the advanced age, low level of education and poor state of health of many former forced labourers.15 In view of the debacle that had resulted from the compensation programme in the 1990s, it was essential for the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and its reputation that compensation for former Soviet forced labourers was reliably provided this time. It was assumed that the programme’s implementation in Russia would become a touchstone of the entire compensation

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programme. The German foundation was, then, under intense political and public pressure to avoid the mistakes of the 1990s. In this context of heightened tension, former forced labourers in Russia received their payments much later than claimants applying to the other partner organizations.

Statistics on the Compensation Programme in Belarus and Russia In the course of the compensation programme administered by the Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’, between 8 August 2001 and 31 December 2006, the Belarusian foundation afforded payments amounting to €345.3 million to some 129,000 beneficiaries. Most of the claimants came from Belarus; 9,239 came from Estonia; 1,108 came from other CIS countries. In addition, the Belarusian foundation paid a total of €2,213,477 to 338 victims of ‘other personal injury’, a compensation category primarily devised to benefit the victims of medical experiments.16 Due to unexpected demographic factors, a somewhat surprising profile emerged of the programme’s beneficiaries in terms of age and gender: over eighty per cent of them had been minors at the time of performing forced labour; two thirds of them were women. Over 32,000 former forced labourers (twenty-six per cent) died before compensation payments had been issued. Hence, in a quarter of cases, payments were made to claimants’ legal heirs.17 Among the partner organizations, the Belarusian foundation, with its strict, military-style hierarchy and methods influenced by Soviet models, was perceived as the antithesis of modern, Western-style bureaucracies. Yet its methods were undeniably effective in the Belarusian context and it enjoyed a relatively good reputation among its clientele. The statistics on payments show that over sixty per cent of beneficiaries in Belarus were classified as eligible under the programme’s option clause. More than half of the Belarusian foundation’s total expenditure went to them. Belarusian use of the option clause stands out as particularly extensive. Here, it was extended to include a further ten categories of Nazi victims. This was not possible to the same extent in Russia or Ukraine.18 Moreover, beneficiaries of the Belarusian option clause were entitled to the most generous rates of compensation of all three countries. The Belarusian foundation was even able to boost some categories’ rates with surplus funds at a later stage. The largest

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groups to benefit from the Belarusian use of the option clause consisted of forced labourers deployed in agriculture and non-forced labourers who had been confined in camps under especially harsh conditions, such as the death camp near Ozariči and the children’s ‘blood collection camp’ in Krasnyi Berg. Thus the Belarusian foundation used the option clause to afford compensation payments to tens of thousands of Nazi victims who had not performed any forced labour, or could not provide proof that they had done so. In addition, it created categories to enable former forced labourers on USSR territory (and in Finland), detainees in places of confinement there, and deportees within the Soviet Union to claim entitlement to compensation. In Russia, in contrast, the reconciliation foundation’s lack of surplus funds prevented it from taking these victim groups into account. In general, beneficiaries of all categories received somewhat higher rates in Belarus than in Russia or Ukraine. With respect to former inmates of concentration camps and ghettos, however, the Foundation Law stipulated that a uniform sum of DM 15,000 (€7,669) be paid in all countries. The principle, agreed on at the preliminary international negotiations, that the rate for Jewish concentration camp and ghetto survivors should be equal in all countries was not applied to the other victim categories. This was partly because the Soviet Union’s young successor states had divergent ideas on the political importance of various Nazi victim groups. The foundations used the option clause, then, as a tool for promoting political interpretations of history and supporting nation-building processes, as far as their individual funds would allow. The statistics also show that after issuing payments to all persons eligible under the Foundation Law, the Belarusian foundation still had over fifty per cent surplus funds that could be used to benefit other groups of Nazi victims within the frame of the option clause. This was not the case in Russia and Ukraine. These countries were left with only twenty-seven and twenty per cent, respectively, of their funds to benefit the victim groups included by means of their national option clauses. In the context of the forced labourer compensation programme, the Russian foundation issued payments totalling €420.9 million to over 252,000 former Nazi victims (13,691 of whom were from Latvia, 13,334 from Lithuania and 3,000 from other CIS countries) between 8 August 2001 and 31 December 2006. In addition, it paid €1.72 million compensation for ‘other personal injury’ to 265 beneficiaries (half of whom were from Latvia). In about five per cent of cases, the compensation payments were not collected. If the foundation could not locate potential recipients, which mostly occurred because they had moved or died, their claims expired.19

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Over 78,000 (31 per cent) of the 252,000 eligible claimants died before the compensation programme was concluded. Their payments were made to their legal heirs.20 At 31 per cent, the mortality rate of claimants in Russia was distinctly higher than in Belarus, where 26 per cent of claimants passed away before the programme’s completion. But it was highest in Ukraine, at a dramatic 40 per cent.21 These figures can certainly be interpreted as an indicator of the conditions in which the war generations lived in the Soviet successor states. It is hardly surprising to find that former Nazi victims in Belarus had a somewhat better standard of living than that of their peers in Russia and Ukraine. The late submission of applications posed a constant problem throughout the payment procedure in all the successor states of the Soviet Union. The reconciliation foundations made repeated bids to extend the time limits for the sake of their clientele, some with success. Nevertheless, in Belarus over 14,000 potential beneficiaries decided to forego claims when they were advised that they were too late. Eleven per cent of potential beneficiaries were thus deprived of compensation. The majority of them were so-called ‘relocated persons’ who had been deported within the Soviet Union, had performed forced labour and were theoretically entitled to benefits under the option clause. Most of these claims reached the Belarusian foundation in 2003 and 2004.22 One can only speculate on the reasons for this large number (even in comparison with Russia and Ukraine) of late applications. The Belarusian foundation attributed it chiefly to the poor public relations work of the regional offices receiving the claims. But like most of the partner organizations, it had distinctly underestimated the number of ‘relocated persons’. In the absence of any reliable studies or data from the first compensation programme on this group, it had initially estimated them to number about 3,000.23 Similarly, in Russia, some 131,000 mostly relocated persons – adults who had been abducted within the occupied Soviet territories and exploited as forced labour, and their children – did not benefit from the programme. Although their claims were approved and they were found eligible under the option clause, the Russian foundation did not have any funds remaining with which to pay them compensation.24 It was particularly frustrating for claimants to be denied payments even after their claims had been accepted. And it seemed all the more incomprehensible since the Russian social security offices had officially acknowledged the underage victims of relocation, and some others, as victims of Nazism, and therefore as eligible for special pensions. The thousands of letters of complaint written by relocated persons to the Russian foundation, the president and other state institutions are

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testimony to their anger and disappointment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of them held the Russian foundation responsible for their misfortune, whose personnel they continued to suspect of corruption and embezzlement.25 The Russian foundation was forced to reject a total of 176,430 claims from Nazi victims. Of those, 47,081 were from applicants who had been ‘relocated’ within the Soviet Union as adults and 83,919 from claimants who had been children. Other groups whose claims were rejected included former prisoners of war (15,709), ethnic Germans (4,996), Ingermanlandish26 (5,147) and detainees of other, non-recognized places of confinement (5,144). The number of rejections was therefore relatively high in Russia, compared to only 4,238 in Belarus and 14,506 in Ukraine.27 The payment practice in Belarus and Russia and communication with the German foundation was shaped by the ongoing process of negotiating and readjusting the programme’s terms. When processing claims, foundation staff in Russia and Belarus were confronted with far more complex historical realities than the Foundation Law provided for, making constant readjustments necessary. Problems also arose in the Soviet Union’s successor states from the peculiarities of Soviet archiving. One example is the controversial differentiation between ‘forced labour’ and ‘voluntary cooperation’: in some of the old KGB filtration files on forced labourers, victims were marked as having worked ‘voluntarily’ in Germany. During the first compensation programme, notes to this effect were taken as grounds for the Belarusian and Russian foundations to refuse payments. The Foundation Law did not provide for a differentiation between ‘voluntary’ and ‘forcible’ labour deployment or stipulate that prisoners of war or collaborators were to be excluded from the programme. Yet in practice, payments to incriminated persons could only be avoided if such distinctions were made. On the basis of the KGB files, the foundation staff in the Soviet successor states continued to maintain that labour in some cases had been voluntary, which the German foundation did not always agree with. Reliable information on these cases was scarce since civilian Soviet collaboration with the Nazis in the Second World War remained, and still remains, a blank spot in the historiography of post-Soviet states. A meeting of the board of trustees was held in Berlin to discuss the issue of ‘voluntariness’ in depth, and resulted in the ruling that labourers from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia (Ostarbeiter) deployed from October 1941 should be presumed to have been victims of deportation as long as there was no documentary evidence to suggest that the persons in question had been

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sent to Germany in the context of working for the German occupation authorities, the Wehrmacht or the SS.28 It soon emerged, however, that the historical reality of many people’s experiences during the war was far more complicated than even this ruling provided for. Some of the accounts submitted to the foundations showed that biographies could include phases of collaboration, forced labour and/or resistance in seamless succession. These applicants could not be unequivocally classified as either ‘collaborators’, ‘forced labourers’ or ‘resistance fighters’. One example is the case of Fedor U. from the Vitebsk region of Belarus, who initially served in the auxiliary police under German occupation but was subsequently arrested by the Germans on suspicion of fostering partisan contacts and made to perform forced labour in an aluminium factory near Munich. Liberated by the Red Army, he joined its ranks before being accused of collaboration and sentenced by a Soviet military tribunal to ten years’ confinement in a reformatory labour camp.29 In some cases, victims and perpetrators apparently belonged to the same family, such as in the case of a Belarusian claimant who was deported to Latvia with her mother while her father (who was convicted of collaboration after the war) stayed in Belarus with her siblings.30 Frequently, it was not entirely clear whether a claimant had suffered deportation – the crucial factor by which it was presumed one could distinguish forced labour from collaboration. Seemingly incompatible elements coincided in more than a few war biographies. Interestingly, the Belarusian security offices received a number of complaints from residents denouncing convicted collaborators who had successfully claimed compensation payments.31 Hence, the compensation programme to some extent resulted in an (unintentional) revision of the Soviet post-war practice of condemning collaborators. Yet the issue of Nazi collaboration in the Second World War has still not been examined in depth either in Belarus or Russia to this day.

Consequences of the Forced Labour Compensation Programme in Russia and Belarus There can be no universal answer to the question of the objective consequences (and subjective views) of the forced labour compensation programme in all the participating countries. However, it is fair to say that the compensation programme had the greatest repercussions for the successor states of the Soviet Union, where the most subjective importance was attached to it. In Russia and Belarus, the compensation

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programme was implemented in a highly charged political context where it intersected with major social, political and economic processes of reorganization and transformation. Below, the consequences for individual claimants and their personal views of the programme will be investigated, as well as the social impact of the programme. Not only successful claimants will be considered but also those whose claims were rejected for various reasons and those who decided against applying for compensation in the end. Claimants’ personal views and opinions of the compensation programme can be deduced from interviews, responses to the ex post checks by the German foundation and the extensive correspondence between former Nazi victims and the compensation foundations.32 For claimants in Russia and Belarus, the payments held symbolic as well as material significance. Unsurprisingly, the lower the pensions were in a participating country, the greater the material significance of the compensation payments. Hence, it was greatest in the successor states of the Soviet Union. Many former forced labourers here declared that the money ‘had helped them a lot to live’. Even the smaller payments exceeded the annual income of most pensioners in these countries. Some of them expressed their gratitude towards the German foundation ‘for not forgetting them and supporting them financially in difficult times’. Many letters from former forced labourers made reference to their dire need, poor healthcare and lack of state benefits. A significant proportion of claimants did not live to receive second instalment payments: in Belarus twenty-six per cent (the same number as in the Czech Republic), in Russia thirty-one per cent and in Ukraine as many as forty per cent of claimants died before the programme had been completed. As a direct consequence of the payments, former Nazi victims were finally able to pay for medication, surgery or dentures, purchase washing machines or televisions or have repairs carried out on their homes. Many used the money to support their children or grandchildren – in most cases, the money benefited the younger generations as well as the older. In some cases, it was set aside for the recipient’s own funeral. Despite the relative material importance of the compensation payments in the successor states of the Soviet Union, even here it was outweighed by their symbolic significance. Most former forced labourers were predominantly concerned with gaining recognition as victims of Nazism within their societies and so being rehabilitated and rid of the taint of collaboration at last. This is most apparent in the desperate letters written to the compensation foundations by those who (for various reasons) were not deemed eligible. Many of the authors begged for at least a small symbolic sum ‘in order to tell the neighbours’. Former

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Soviet prisoners of war provide a particularly tragic example. Excluded (for mainly political reasons) from entitlement to compensation under the Foundation Law, they continue to be largely stigmatized as traitors to the fatherland, even in the Soviet Union’s successor states. Those who received compensation payments, on the other hand, often gained recognition on two levels: within society, as the injustices they had suffered were finally publicly acknowledged; and within their family circles, as they were now able to contribute significantly to the family budget. In isolated cases, the payments had very negative consequences for beneficiaries who became victims of armed robberies or fraud or found themselves at the centre of family disputes over how to distribute the money.33 In post-Soviet countries, the reconciliation foundations and victims’ associations also awarded some former forced labourers medals or decorations as a symbol of public recognition, continuing the Soviet tradition of honouring war heroes and diligent workers. Thus beneficiaries were enabled to speak publicly about their suffering, which many had not even mentioned to close family members, for the first time in decades. Ever more opportunities arose for them to recount their histories: when applying to the foundations, at encounters organized by German towns or by the German foundation, to the press, in memoirs, at drama performances on the topic of forced labour in Kiev. The present author also relied on the cooperation and accounts of former Nazi victims to conduct research. As well as performing a – not undisputed – therapeutic function, talking about their personal histories had another effect, the importance of which is not to be underestimated: these former forced labourers, some of whom had absorbed the stigma of being traitors to the fatherland into their own self-images, began to consciously assert themselves as victims of injustice for the first time. As a consequence, a wide range of victims’ associations was founded which began to demand public recognition and material support from their national governments. This seems to corroborate the connection found by scientific research between memory and identity.34 Furthermore, through the experience of compensation, former Nazi victims saw their histories in a different light, by which they could reinterpret them and to some extent read new meaning into them.35 It seems that the image of Germany held by former Nazi victims grew more positive over the course of the compensation programme, possibly in response to the Germans acting as their quasi-agents, working to improve their position in their native countries in eastern Europe. Echoes of these developments were communicated to society as a whole, albeit to a greater extent in Belarus and Ukraine than in Russia.

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The German embassy in Minsk, for example, reported in 2003 that the forced labour compensation programme had had a very positive effect on the Belarusians’ image of Germany and that Germany was consistently named the most popular Western country in opinion polls.36 Perhaps surprisingly, this positive image of Germany began to be communicated to other groups of war survivors, too. During an oral history project with Ukrainian eyewitnesses who had lived under German occupation in the Donbass, Ukraine, we were startled to find that at least some of them had refigured their memories, so to speak, to view German occupation during the Second World War as a ‘missed historical opportunity’.37 To some extent, such reinterpretations of history were a corollary of the radical changes caused by the end of the Soviet Union, which for a large proportion of the war generation was attended by a loss of status, a dramatic drop in living standards, general chaos and disorientation and their complete loss of faith in state institutions. Due to this loss of faith in government, most claimants viewed the work of their national partner organization in the compensation programme with deep mistrust, and vented their latent suspicions of corruption in many letters to the German foundation. In contrast, the integrity of the German foundation was felt by most claimants to be beyond question. Hence those who received payments and were satisfied with the programme attributed its success mainly to the German foundation, while most of those who were disappointed blamed their own national foundation. This pattern indicates that many claimants did not have a clear understanding of how authority and responsibilities were shared within the compensation programme but interpreted it in the light of their previous experiences of bureaucracy. Among the former Soviet forced labourers were some who hoped to make contact with Germans they had known during the war. Letters to the German foundation asking to convey their regards included the following: ‘Many thanks to the families of foreman Hans and machinist Erich, who provided me with bread-and-butter sandwiches’. The fact that hardly any of these messages reached their addressees is another tragic aspect of the fate suffered by former forced labourers from the Soviet Union. Separated for a long period by the Iron Curtain, Soviet citizens were prevented from resuming contact and friendships with Germans after the war. Only a few former forced labourers had the opportunity to revive relationships they had forged during the war in the context of local government-organized visits or by their own efforts. The subjective importance attached to the compensation programme and level of satisfaction among eastern European claimants varied greatly, depending on their personal expectations as well as the amount

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of money they received. Claimants’ expectations were informed by a wide range of factors: firstly, comparison with the earlier compensation programmes of the 1990s, which differed from the present programme in their treatment of the various victim groups and stricter differentiation between degrees of suffering; secondly, comparison between countries participating in the present programme, since the same rules did not apply in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia but varied from country to country in terms of categories of entitlement, rates of compensation for each category and processing practice. News of the differences in national practice quickly spread among claimants in the post-Soviet countries through family grapevines and networks surrounding victims’ associations, which were a strong feature of the post-Soviet world. Many former forced labourers were indignant that different rules applied in each country and protested in many letters that the laws should be the same all over the former Soviet Union. Thirdly, many claimants found it hard to appreciate the rivalry between the parallel legal systems and their divergent notions of justice – evident when the German Foundation Law clashed with the participating countries’ national laws and regulations. The German Foundation Law had made no provisions for the complex reality of many victims’ biographies and histories of persecution, and needed to be constantly amended over the course of the programme. Many victims felt that the partial compensation offered by the German programmes stood in no relation to the injustices they had suffered, though it should be noted that elements of persecution under Stalinist and Nazi rule often blended in claimants’ memories. Not infrequently, victims and foundation staff operated at cross-purposes, with claimants insisting on social and historical justice while foundation staff were soon primarily concerned with completing the bureaucratic task at hand, the logic of which could hardly be conveyed to the victims, in as fair a manner as possible. Fourthly, personal standards changed considerably after the fall of the Iron Curtain, especially in Russia. Former Soviet citizens were now more likely to compare their situation with that in the West, where Nazi victims had been receiving compensation for decades. Russian claimants were, then, not only dissatisfied with their treatment in comparison to Belarusians, who did indeed receive slightly larger payments in some categories, but evidently also had higher expectations within post-Soviet Russia, which under Putin had rekindled its ambitions to be perceived as a superpower. What significance did the compensation programme have for society in the participating countries? In this respect, again, the programme

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seems to have had the deepest impact in the successor states of the Soviet Union. In these countries the compensation programme became integrated into processes of national reorganization and, in some of them, helped significantly to supplement their inadequate welfare budgets. These unintentional effects should not be underestimated, especially their impact on small countries such as Belarus with a comparatively high proportion of Nazi victims among the retirement-age generation. Here, the compensation for victims of dictatorship could even be regarded as having helped to a degree to support new dictatorships. Along with the compensation programme, European views of history were imported into these post-Soviet societies, which (in the case of Russia and Belarus) were otherwise still firmly in the grip of Soviet traditions of commemorating the ‘Great Patriotic War’. The pluralization of memorial cultures found expression in new monuments for hitherto forgotten groups of victims as well as in literature, art and exhibitions on the topic of forced labour. The national foundations set up to implement the compensation programme were among the new players in the field of commemoration policy. Many of the memorial communities and cultures now emerging formed an alternative to official state policy on the past in the successor states of the Soviet Union. As if existing in a kind of parallel universe, they were tolerated (at least at times) but not absorbed into the state canon of historical remembrance. Official commemoration of the past in Putin’s Russia and in Belarus continues to be strongly influenced by Soviet (and to some extent Stalinist) traditions, to the point of reviving the personality cult surrounding Stalin.38 The enormous vase emblazoned with a portrait of Stalin displayed at the entrance of the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Moscow, which hosted the German touring exhibition on forced labour in 2011, was therefore no mere quirk but indeed symptomatic of Russian state policy on the past in general, and on former forced labourers and their place in society in particular. The Russian state’s increasingly dominant policy on history under Putin, focusing entirely on heroic victory and renewed admiration of Stalin, leaves little scope for considering the victims of Nazism or Stalinism. The new images of history imported into post-Soviet societies along with the compensation programme sparked rivalry between different victim groups and social tensions within the older generations. One bone of contention thus unearthed was the predominance of the Holocaust and its special position in Western memorial culture, which elicited resentment from non-Jewish victims in eastern Europe. Secondly, a rift emerged between victims of Nazism who were minors at the time of their persecution and those who had performed forced

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labour as adults. The Soviet policy of acknowledging child victims, based on the blanket assumption that minors were innocent, but leaving adults with the taint of complicity, had taken root in many minds. But the German Foundation Law turned this traditional victim hierarchy more or less on its head, eliciting protests from former child victims. In Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, underage forced labourers not only had the largest victims’ associations and the most experience of self-organization, they also had the youngest and most active members. During the latter Soviet era, they had gained victim status and the right to benefits, in contrast to adult forced labourers, who were widely regarded as ‘collaborators’ to the end. What role did the compensation programme play in the development of civil societies in eastern Europe? This issue was evidently an important concern of many players within the German foundation. In conversation, several of them expressed hopes that implementing a compensation programme under German law would help promote democracy in the former Eastern bloc. Indeed, the claimants encountered German legal and administrative practices at many points during the compensation programme. Through this contact, they learnt to assert themselves as victims, to found strong associations and to present their demands and claims to their own national governments. Perhaps surprisingly, an especially diversified and assertive scene promoting victims’ interests emerged in Belarus, despite the unfavourable political context. In their struggle to have their demands heard, some former Nazi victims in Belarus turned to the help of international organizations and players. This is illustrated by a letter written to President Lukashenko by former forced labourers containing the line: ‘If the president fails to read our letter again, we will call upon the international organizations!’ Hence one important result that the compensation programmes achieved was to open the participating states to international influences and players. However, these brought not only new ideals and views of history into the post-Soviet countries but also new social conflicts.

Conclusion: Compensation in Belarus and Russia In the case of Belarus, it is first and foremost remarkable that its national reconciliation foundation implemented the compensation programme in a manner that ran counter to many people’s expectations. From a German perspective, cooperation with the Belarusian foundation was surprisingly trouble-free, so much so that the Belarusians

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came to be regarded as paragons of compensation and reconciliation work, even though the Belarusians and Germans took widely diverging approaches to administration based on very different communication codes and systems of reference. Secondly, it seems equally surprising that the Belarusian national foundation at times disregarded Belarusian government policy and, assuming the logic of an NGO, acted more in the interests of its clientele. It should be noted, however, that where forced labour compensation was concerned, the otherwise authoritarian Lukashenko government strove to maintain the appearance of transparency and the rule of law.39 Thirdly, contrary to expectations, Belarus’s bureaucratic machinery, organized along somewhat pre-modern lines according to patriarchal principles, worked efficiently and, to a large extent, to the satisfaction of its clientele. The reasons for these unexpected findings will be examined below. Some of the phenomena described above can be attributed to the importance of the forced labour compensation programme to the Lukashenko government. It seized upon the programme as an ideal project with which to improve its image at home and abroad. Victims of Nazism formed a significant group of voters for the Lukashenko regime. Moreover, the payments from Germany provided a badly needed boost to the ailing Belarusian welfare system. In a manner of speaking, then, the compensation for victims of a previous dictatorship contributed to stabilizing the contemporary dictatorship in Belarus. The Belarusian Foundation Understanding and Reconciliation cannot, however, be simply regarded as an extension of the Lukashenko regime. It negotiated – at times very skilfully – the field of tension between the German sponsors, the Belarusian government and an emergent society. In the process, it increasingly acted according to the logic and self-conception of an independent organization (and not a state authority) and made full use of its scope for action in the interests of its clientele and its own interests as an institution. The processes of democratization thus evidenced should not, however, be over-emphasized. Despite the adverse political context, the Belarusian foundation staff succeeded in gaining the trust of their German colleagues. No doubt it helped that, for the most part, the Belarusians submitted unresistingly to the Germans’ ideas and accepted their putative mentor role. Positioned between their own government on one side and the German sponsors on the other, the Belarusian foundation navigated the different players’ expectations, codes and rules of conduct and pressed through their own interests at crucial points surprisingly well. It skilfully and diplomatically glossed over the discrepancy between its own

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Soviet-oriented administrative practice and the German foundation’s guiding principles with demonstrative hospitality and small courtesies. The strategy obviously paid off as the Belarusian foundation worked very efficiently, given the local circumstances, and largely to the satisfaction of the claimants. As a result, the German foundation in Berlin received distinctly fewer justified complaints about the Belarusian foundation than about the Russian foundation. The Belarusian foundation had not only negotiated a favourable starting point at the preliminary negotiations, it was also able to use the resources still available from the preceding compensation programme to the claimants’ advantage. The Belarusian endowment was distinctly larger than the Russian or Ukrainian fund in relation to the actual number of beneficiaries. Hence the Belarusian foundation was able to take full advantage of the option clause and – reflecting national policy – afford compensation to groups of Nazi victims that were not provided for under the German Foundation Law. The fact that the Belarusian foundation still had funds remaining from the first compensation programme, with which it could sponsor a range of other projects in social, educational and cultural fields, increased its public standing. For this reason, the Belarusian foundation gained a far stronger position as a new player in the field of history policy than, for example, the Russian foundation, despite the fact that it was at odds with state policy on the past, which continued to be strongly influenced by Soviet (and to some extent Stalinist) traditions of war remembrance. Belarus developed a dual approach to remembering the war: alternative memories promoted by groups within society, and increasingly represented in the public sphere in the form of artworks, literature and monuments, existed alongside the official canon – tolerated but not entirely accepted by the state. Victim groups which corresponded with the canon of official memorial policy (such as the Ozariči survivors) and had the backing of strong associations and contacts in government commanded the most attention. Recipients of compensation payments, both in Belarus and Estonia, were relatively satisfied with the work of the Belarusian foundation, as interviews with former Nazi victims and representatives of victims’ associations show. But even in Belarus there were thousands whose hopes for compensation were disappointed, including over 14,000 potential beneficiaries whose claims were received too late. Many of the unsuccessful claimants felt confused, disappointed and angry; some even felt they had suffered ‘double persecution’. Furthermore, many letters from Nazi victims to the foundations attested to striking deficits in the Belarusian welfare and healthcare systems, challenging the

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widely held belief that Belarus’s social system was relatively sound in comparison to those of other successor states of the Soviet Union. The compensation programme in Russia was, at least superficially, by no means a success story. Its history was shaped by frequent miscommunication and misunderstandings – both between the Russian, German and Baltic organizations cooperating in the programme and between claimants and foundations – and a tendency to resort to stereotypical notions. The Russian reconciliation foundation operated on an exceedingly unfavourable basis, consisting of the negative legacy of the first compensation programme, inadequate funding as a result of the preliminary negotiations, the unpopular task of processing claims from Lithuania and Latvia, and a lack of support from the Russian government, which attached little political importance to the forced labour issue. Thus a picture emerges of players preoccupied by issues other than compensating forced labourers – with power and influence, specific interpretations of history, rivalry between legal systems, and with the legacy of the first compensation programme. Even at the international negotiations preceding the programme’s launch, Russian negotiators were primarily concerned with covering up the loss of millions from the first compensation programme and asserting their supremacy in the post-Soviet camp. The Russian government passed up the opportunity to increase its international standing by confronting the forced labour issue and its negotiators secured Russian victims only a meagre portion of the endowment. From the outset, cooperation between the German and Russian foundations and their Baltic partners was clouded by more or less highly charged power struggles on a national and an international level. They were fought out in an ongoing correspondence which caused repeated delays in the issuing of payments. Another obstacle to the GermanRussian cooperation was the constant problem of coordinating the rival legal systems. All these unfavourable parameters were to have a negative outcome for the Russian victims of Nazism. The number of rejected claims was especially high in Russia, the payment rates allotted to some categories were distinctly lower than in Belarus and Ukraine, and waiting periods were especially long. Almost a third of claimants did not live to see the second instalment payments. Furthermore, the fact that Belarusian and Ukrainian victims of Nazism received higher payments was perceived as a humiliation for Russia, which under Putin aspired to be a superpower once again. The negative experience of the first compensation programme, and the widespread loss of faith in state institutions resulting from the

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Yeltsin era, had a further impact on the programme that was manifested in the communication between Russian claimants and the German foundation. Dissatisfied claimants held the Russian foundation chiefly responsible for their misfortune. On the basis of their previous experiences, they assumed that the incompetence and corruptibility of Russian bureaucrats was to blame. At the same time, few of them harboured doubts about the competence, credibility or fairness of the Germans. Thus, in the Russian case, a disastrous combination of particularly negative parameters and a strong tendency to view national bureaucracies with mistrust prevailed. Although the Russian foundation staff eventually gained the trust of their German colleagues through their reliable work and stoic toleration of innumerable ordeals, they were not able to win over their Russian clientele to the same degree. The experience of the first compensation programme and the Yeltsin era in general had left too deep an impression. Still, in some respects the Russian foundation was undeniably successful, despite its many difficulties. One example is the unexpectedly high number of initial claims it attracted, including many from ‘relocated’ forced labourers and detainees of ‘other places of confinement’, partly thanks to its effective outreach campaign. In view of the country’s size, this was a considerable achievement.40 It should also be noted that the Russian foundation staff eventually mastered the difficult, conflict-ridden task of processing claims from Lithuania and Latvia to the satisfaction of the Baltic claimants, as the steady drop in letters of complaint to the German foundation shows. Furthermore, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Russia’s victory, the Russian reconciliation foundation mounted an exhibition on forced labour that also addressed questions of repatriation and individual post-war experiences, in a bid to draw the attention of a wider public to these issues. Nevertheless, the compensation programme in Russia had only a very limited impact on public perception. Under Putin, the state gained increasing control over memorial culture to focus entirely on Russia’s heroic victory over Nazi Germany and revive admiration for Stalin. In this context, there was little scope for considering the victims of either Nazism or Stalinism. Belligerent states, such as Russia vis-à-vis Chechnya, tend to evade the issue of war victims. It remains to address the question of whether the Russian-German cooperation helped to improve Russia’s relations with the international community or its prospects of international cooperation. Here, too, a rather sobering conclusion must be drawn. In 2005, Putin passed new laws governing – and severely limiting – the activities of Russian and foreign NGOs in Russia while placing a number of controlling devices

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at the disposal of the state. During Putin’s second term, then, civil society in Russia came under increasing constraints. The cooperation between the German and Russian foundations came to an end in 2011. Subsequently, the Russian government dissolved the reconciliation foundation rather than financing it from the state budget. According to unofficial sources, it did so partly because the Russian ministries responsible objected to receiving instructions on social policy from Germany. It seems characteristic of the post-Soviet countries that the foundations working towards reconciliation here – unlike in east central European countries – were not able to survive after they had completed the compensation programme. Thus the German forced labour exhibition in Moscow probably marked not only a high point but also an end to Russian society’s confrontation of the issue of forced labour.

Tanja Penter is Professor of Eastern European History at Heidelberg University, Germany. She is a member of the German-Russian and the German-Ukrainian Commission of Historians and the scientific board of the German Historical Institute in Moscow. Her books include Kohle für Stalin und Hitler: Arbeiten und Leben im Donbass 1929 bis 1953 (Essen: Klartext, 2010), for which she received the René Kuczynski Award 2011.

Notes  1. Claimants found it especially hard to appreciate why people who had received payments under the first programme were no longer eligible under the second.  2. Regulation no. 390 of the Ministerial Council of the Republic of Belarus, ‘On the establishment of the Foundation Understanding and Reconciliation’, Archive of the Belarusian Foundation (AbSt).  3. Order (Rasporjaženie) no. 125r of the Ministerial Council of the Republic of Belarus, 18 February 1993, ibid.  4. Donal O’Sullivan, ‘Der schwere Abschied vom sozialistischen Erbe: Belarus zwischen europäischer und sowjetischer Identität’, in Leonid Luks and Donal O’Sullivan (eds), Die Rückkehr der Geschichte: Osteuropa auf der Suche nach Kontinuität (Cologne: Böhlau, 1999), 91–110.  5. Interview with Günter Saathoff, recorded in August 2009 in Berlin.  6. On these negotiations, see Henning Borggräfe in the present book.  7. Report of the German embassy in Minsk, 7 October 1999, EVZ Archives, ASSI, Berichte der AV des AA (A-G).  8. When the foundation was dissolved, the files went to the Belarusian state archive in Minsk. Unfortunately, they had not been numbered in the

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f­ oundation archive. Therefore all references to documents from these files below give only their location in the foundation archive (AbSt).  9. See the report by the German embassy on the situation in the Russian foundation, 24 October 2000, EVZ Archives, 501.15. 10. For details of Andrei Voikov’s biography see EVZ Archives, 501.15, 2003. 11. Report from Geier to Lambsdorff, 20 October 1999, in Termine/ Gesprächspartner Graf Lambsdorff, EVZ Archives, ASSI-TGL, 1.3. 12. See Constantin Goschler, Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS- Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008). 13. See Tanja Penter, ‘Zwischen Misstrauen, Marginalität und Missverständ­ nissen: Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung in Russland, Litauen und Lettland’, in Constantin Goschler (ed.), in cooperation with Jose Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts: Die Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft und ihre Partnerorganisationen, vol. 4: Helden, Opfer, Ostarbeiter: Das Auszahlungsprogramm in der ehemaligen Sowjetunion (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 194–280. 14. Jansen and Bräutigam to Malyševa, 27 February 2001, EVZ Archives, 501.15. 15. Russian foundation to Michael Geier (head of the Lambsdorff task force), 28 August 2000, EVZ Archives, 501.15. 16. Each victim of ‘other personal injury’ therefore ultimately received a sum of DM 13,000 (€6,693). See the statistics on the Belarusian foundation, 21 December 2006, AbSt. 17. Pursuant to the Foundation Law, claims by persons who died after 15 February 1999 remained valid. During the first compensation programme, carried out 1993–1999, 25,482 registered Nazi victims (17.3 per cent of beneficiaries) had already died. 18. The Russian foundation added six more categories to the option clause; the Ukrainian foundation, seven. 19. Final report by the Russian foundation of November 2007, in Archive of the Russian Foundation (ArSt). 20. Final report by the Russian foundation of November 2007, in ArSt. 21. See Julia Landau’s chapter on the Ukrainian foundation in the present book. 22. Work report up to 31 December 2006 by the Belarusian Foundation Understanding and Reconciliation, drawn up by K.I. Prochorenko, AbSt. 23. See Lutz Niethammer’s figures on the number of surviving forced labourers drawn up in 1999, based on the findings of a workshop with representatives of the partner organizations in Florence, September 1999, EVZ Archives, Arbeitsstab Stiftungsinitiative, Zwangsarbeiterstatistiken –ASSIZw-St 7.3. 24. See statistics on the database of the Russian foundation, drawn up in August 2009 for the present author; also Annex 1 on the twenty-first meeting of the board of trustees in June 2007, EVZ Archives, 105.00. 25. See the extensive correspondence held by the Russian foundation.

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26. Persons who were deported 1943–44 from the occupied Soviet territories to Finland and had performed forced labour in places of confinement there under the regime of Germany’s Finnish allies. 27. Annex 1 on the twenty-first meeting of the board of trustees in June 2007, EVZ Archives, 105.00. The Ukrainian foundation had warned the victims of ‘relocation’ that their claims had no prospects of success during the outreach campaign. Consequently, many ‘relocated’ persons did not even attempt to file claims for compensation. If this had not been the case, the number of rejections would have been much higher here, too. 28. Minutes of the meeting of the board of trustees, 21 June 2001, EVZ Archives, 105.00. 29. Letter from the committee for state security of the Republic of Belarus in the Vitebsk region to the Belarusian foundation, 30 January 2001, AbSt. 30. Jansen to Gerasimov, 9 May 2003, EVZ Archives, 501.10. However, conviction by a Soviet military tribunal for ‘collaboration’ did not necessarily signify that the offence had been proven to have been committed. On Soviet post-war trials against war criminals and collaborators, see Tanja Penter, ‘Local Collaborators on Trial: Soviet War Crimes Trials under Stalin (1943–1953)’, Cahiers du Monde russe 49(2–3) (2008): 341–64; idem, ‘Collaboration on Trial: New Source Material on Soviet Postwar Trials against Collaborators’, Slavic Review 64 (2005): 780–90. 31. Letter from the security council of the Republic of Belarus to the board of  trustees’ chairman of the Belarusian foundation, 21 March 2001, AbSt. 32. See the holdings on the ex post checks in Belarus and Russia, EVZ Archives; also the extensive correspondence between the Belarusian and Russian foundations and the German foundation. 33. See Dmitrii Tytarenko, ‘“Deutsches Geld” für die Zwangsarbeiter: Die Reaktionen der Bevölkerung des Gebietes Donezk auf die Auszahlungen der Stiftung EVZ’, in Goschler, Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit, vol. 4, 281–307. Only in May 2015 did the German government finally decide to pay compensation to Soviet prisoners of war. See Tanja Penter, ‘Späte Entschädigung für die Opfer einer kalkulierten Vernichtungsstrategie: Offene Forschungsfragen zum Umgang mit sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen in den besetzten Gebieten’, in Zeitgeschichte online (November 2015). 34. See Maurice Halbwachs, Das Gedächtnis und seine sozialen Bedingungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985); idem, Das kollektive Gedächtnis (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985); Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik (Munich: Beck, 2006), 31–36. 35. To compare this with the situation in Poland, see Piotr Filipkowski and Kornelia Kończal, ‘Erinnerungsforschung in Polen: Traditionen, Konzepte, (Dis)-Kontinuitäten’, Osteuropa 5 (2012): 19–46. 36. Report by the embassy on the tenth anniversary of the Belarusian foundation, 12 June 2003, EVZ Archives, 520.00, BEL. 37. See Tanja Penter and Dmitrii Titarenko, ‘Local Memory on War, German Occupation and Postwar Years: An Oral History Project in the Donbass’,

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Cahiers du Monde russe 52(2–3) (2011): 475–97; also idem. Opyt nacistskoj okkupacii v Donbasse: svidetel’stvujut očevidcy (Donec’k: Svit Knyhy, 2013). 38. See Pavel Poljan, Žertvy dvuch diktatur: žizn’, trud, uniženie i smert’ sovetskich voennoplennych i ostarbajterov na čužbine i na rodine (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002); idem Deportiert nach Hause: Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im ‘Dritten Reich’ und ihre Repatriierung (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2001); idem, Ne po svoej vole... Istorija i geografija prinuditel‘nych migracij v SSSR (Munich: Memorial, 2001); Andreas Langenohl, ‘Krieg und Geschichte im Russland der Transformation: Neuinstitutionalisierung und öffentliche Reformulierung’, Zeitgeschichte-online, May 2005; Boris Dubin, ‘Erinnern als staatliche Veranstaltung: Geschichte und Herrschaft in Russland’, Osteuropa 6 (2008): 57–66; Isabelle de Keghel, ‘Verordneter Abschied von der revolutionären Tradition: Der “Tag der nationalen Einheit” in der Russländischen Föderation’, in Lars Karl and Igor J. Poljanski (eds), Geschichtspolitik und Erinnerungskultur im neuen Russland (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2009), 119–40. 39. See Tanja Penter, ‘Die belarussische Stiftung “Verständigung und Aussöhnung”: Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung im Schatten der LukašenkaHerrschaft’, in Goschler, Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit, vol. 4, 104–93. 40. This example also highlights the fact that important aspects of occupation history, such as forced labour within the occupied territories, have yet to be thoroughly researched.

Bibliography Assmann, Aleida. Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik, Munich: Beck, 2006. De Keghel, Isabelle. ‘Verordneter Abschied von der revolutionären Tradition: Der “Tag der nationalen Einheit” in der Russländischen Föderation’, in Lars Karl and Igor J. Poljanski (eds), Geschichtspolitik und Erinnerungskultur im neuen Russland, Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2009, 119–40. Dubin, Boris. ‘Erinnern als staatliche Veranstaltung: Geschichte und Herrschaft in Russland’, Osteuropa 6 (2008), 57–66. Filipkowski, Piotr and Kornelia Kończal. ‘Erinnerungsforschung in Polen: Traditionen, Konzepte, (Dis)-Kontinuitäten’, Osteuropa 5 (2012), 19–46. Goschler, Constantin. Schuld und Schulden: Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS- Verfolgte seit 1945, 2nd ed. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008. Halbwachs, Maurice. Das Gedächtnis und seine sozialen Bedingungen, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985. Halbwachs, Maurice. Das kollektive Gedächtnis, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985. Langenohl, Andreas. ‘Krieg und Geschichte im Russland der Transformation: Neuinstitutionalisierung und öffentliche Reformulierung’, Zeitgeschichteonline, May 2005. O’Sullivan, Donal. ‘Der schwere Abschied vom sozialistischen Erbe: Belarus zwischen europäischer und sowjetischer Identität’, in Leonid Luks and

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Donal O’Sullivan (eds), Die Rückkehr der Geschichte: Osteuropa auf der Suche nach Kontinuität, Cologne: Böhlau, 1999, 91–110. Penter, Tanja. ‘Local Collaborators on Trial: Soviet war crimes trials under Stalin (1943–1953)’, Cahiers du Monde russe 49/2–3 (2008), 341–64. Penter, Tanja. ‘Collaboration on Trial: New source material on Soviet postwar trials against collaborators’, Slavic Review 64 (2005), 780–90. Penter, Tanja. ‘Zwischen Misstrauen, Marginalität und Missverständnissen: Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung in Russland, Litauen und Lettland’, in Constantin Goschler (ed.), in cooperation with Jose Brunner, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Philipp Ther, Die Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts: Die Stiftung ‘Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft’ und ihre Partnerorganisationen, vol. 4: Helden, Opfer, Ostarbeiter: Das Auszahlungsprogramm in der ehemaligen Sowjetunion, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012, 194–280. Penter, Tanja. ‘Die belarussische Stiftung “Verständigung und Aussöhnung”. Zwangsarbeiterentschädigung im Schatten der Lukašenka-Herrschaft’, in Goschler, Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit, vol. 4, 104–93. Penter, Tanja. ‘Späte Entschädigung für die Opfer einer kalkulierten Vernichtungsstrategie: Offene Forschungsfragen zum Umgang mit sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen in den besetzten Gebieten’, Zeitgeschichte-online, November 2015. Penter, Tanja, and Dmitrii Titarenko. ‘Local Memory on War, German Occupation and Postwar Years: An Oral History Project in the Donbass’, Cahiers du Monde russe 52(2–3) (2011), 475–97. Penter, Tanja, and Dmitrii Titarenko. Opyt nacistskoj okkupacii v Donbasse: svidetel’stvujut očevidcy, Donec’k: Svit Knyhy, 2013. Poljan, Pavel. Deportiert nach Hause: Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im ‘Dritten Reich’ und ihre Repatriierung, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2001. Poljan, Pavel. Ne po svoej vole... Istorija i geografija prinuditel’nych migracij v SSSR. Munich: Memorial, 2001. Poljan, Pavel. Žertvy dvuch diktatur: žizn’, trud, uniženie i smert’ sovetskich voennoplennych i ostarbajterov na čužbine i na rodine, Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002. Tytarenko, Dmitrii. ‘“Deutsches Geld” für die Zwangsarbeiter: Die Reaktionen der Bevölkerung des Gebietes Donezk auf die Auszahlungen der Stiftung EVZ’, in Goschler, Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit, vol. 4, 281–307.

 Index adoption, 115, 186 AEG/Telefunken, 33 Africa, xii, 91 Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność (AWS). See Solidarity Election Action Albania, 113 Algeria, 91 Allies, 30, 55, 67, 81, 90, 93, 111, 189, 235n26 America. See United States American Gathering of (Jewish) Holocaust Survivors (and their Descendants), 96 Amsterdam, 93 anti-fascism, 31, 33 Argentina, 138 Armia Krajowa. See Home Army Article 2 Fund, 82, 88–89, 91–92, 95 ‘asocials’, 35, 121 Association of Anti-Fascist Fighters (SPB). See Czech Union of AntiFascist Fighters Association of Forced Labourers (Svaz nuceně nasazenýych, SNN), 165–168, 170–171 Association of Former Political Prisoners (Polski Związek Byłych Więźniów Politycznych, PZBWP), 144–145 Association of Jewish combatants and aggrieved parties in the Second World War (Stowarzyszenie Żydów Kombatantów i Poszkodowanych w II Wojnie Światowej, SŻKP), 132

Association of Liberated Political Prisoners and Their Surviving Dependants (Sdružení osvobozených politických věžnů a pozůstalých, SOPVP), 158, 165–168, 171 Association of Poles who Suffered under the Third Reich (Stowarzyszenie Polaków Kombatantów Poszkodowanych III Rzeszą, SPP), 133, 145, 148n8 Association of Sudeten German Relief Services. See Sudeten German Auschwitz, 32, 39, 160, 195 Australia, 93, 97 Austria, 11, 15, 113, 162 Axis, 113, 115 Babi Yar, 182–183 Baltic States, 12, 38, 214, 216-217, 232 Belarus, 6, 14, 17, 19, 38, 41, 58, 62, 64, 68, 84, 126n17, 186, 191, 195, 200, 211–231, 233, 233n8, 235n32 Belarusian foundation ‘Understanding and Reconciliation’, 62, 68, 195, 212–214, 217–220, 228–230 Belgium, 108–10 Berlin, 3, 12, 23n31–32, 41, 45, 107, 111, 197, 207n69, 214, 217, 221, 230, 233 Berliner Zeitung, 96 board of directors, 57, 58, 63–64, 69, 70, 87–88, 109, 141, 144, 165, 190

240 • Tanja Penter

board of trustees, xii, xv, xvii, 3, 45, 47n8, 57–61, 65, 71, 86, 90, 136, 139, 141, 168, 190, 215, 221 Bonn, 38, 41 Bosch, 166 Bosnia, 113 Bräutigam, Hans-Otto, 58, 144 Bremen–Farge, 107 Brno, 168, 171 Bronfman, Edgar, 83 Brozik, Karl, 83, 86–88, 96 Brüx, 110 Bucharest, 118–119 Buchenwald memorial, 23n31 Bug, 120 Bulgaria, 90–91, 113, 115 Buna, 80 Bundesentschädigungsgesetz (BEG). See German Compensation Law Bundesrückerstattungsgesetz. See Federal Restitution Law Buzek, Jerzy, 139, 148n8 Camps ‘Gypsy camp’, 121 ‘labour and reformatory camps’ (Arbeitserziehungslager), 121 Celje camp, 115 children’s blood collection camp, 196, 219 concentration camp (also concentration camp detainees, inmates, prisoners, survivors), xiv, 3, 28–30, 32–34, 37–38, 40–42, 46, 66, 68, 81–82, 84–85, 88, 90–91, 108–112, 115, 121, 130, 134–135, 157–158, 160, 162, 183, 186, 189–190, 192, 200, 205n33, 219 death camp, 219 Emsland camp, 109 filtration camp, 184, 192 Kahla camp, 109 Komárom camp, 120, 122 labour camp, 90–91, 107, 109, 113, 122, 186, 222 Maribor camp, 122

Mátészalka assembly camp, 120 prison camp, 109 returnee camp, 31 Sarvar camp, 114 Sisak children’s camp, 114 sub-camp, 109 transit camp, 109, 113 war camp, 109, 200 Canada, 93, 97 Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel (COHSI), 96 Central and Eastern European Fund (CEEF), 82, 88–89, 91–92, 159 Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), 158 Česko-Německý Fond Budoucnosti, (ČNFB). See Czech-German Future Fund Chechnya, 232 children (also minors, underage persons) 16, 38, 71, 88, 114–115, 126n22, 136, 141, 170, 183–184, 186–189, 192, 194–196, 218–221, 223, 227–228 Citibank, 119 civil society, 10, 14, 19, 156, 165–166, 212, 233 Clinton, William, 39 Cold War, 31, 37, 46, 55, 172, 185 collaboration, 11, 15–16, 31, 118, 183–184, 187, 221–223, 228, 235n30 commemoration. See memorial culture communism, 9, 30, 93, 131–132, 138, 141, 144, 156, 158, 164–166, 171 complaint, xiv, 35, 85, 87, 97, 107, 112, 138, 141, 143–144, 167, 193, 196, 200, 220, 222, 230, 232 Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (JCC), 2–3, 5–7, 10, 12, 19, 31–37, 39, 41–43, 48n16, 50n57, 55, 58, 62, 69, 71–72, 79–98, 99n9, 101nn3–7, 101n33, 102n59, 106, 132, 134, 159, 216

Index • 241

confinement. See imprisonment Croatia, 90, 107, 113–115 Czech Association of Fighters for Freedom (Český svaz bojovníků za svobodu, ČSBS), 165 Czech compensation law 261/2001, 165 Czech law 255/1946, 159, 169 Czech Republic, 3, 6, 9, 17, 19, 38, 41, 50n57, 58, 86, 147n1, 156–172, 178n83, 190, 223 Czech Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters (SPB), 158, 165, 171 Czech-German Future Fund (ČeskoNěmecký Fond Budoucnosti, ČNFB, Deutsch-Tschechischer Zukunftsfonds, DTZF), 3, 19, 23, 68, 130, 159–161, 163–169, 171–172 Czechoslovakia, 84, 113, 156–159, 165, 166 Daimler Benz (also Chrysler), 27, 37, 40, 81, 166 definitions, xiii, 2, 6, 8–9, 27–28, 30, 33, 38, 42–45, 66, 68, 84–85, 108, 122, 128n45, 134, 140, 142, 162, 164–165, 167, 189, 199, 212, 216 Degussa AG, 58 democracy, 166, 171–172, 201, 207n72, 212, 228–229 deportation (also deportees), xii, 8, 41, 43, 54, 56, 66, 107–108, 110, 112, 114–115, 117, 120–122, 128, 134, 136, 162, 185–186, 189, 192, 194–195, 197, 220–222 Deutsche Bank, 35, 40, 81, 137 Deutscher Bundestag, xiv, xv, 3, 35–37, 42, 44–45, 57–58, 60, 69, 71, 81, 128n45, 135, 160, 190, 202 Deutsch-Tschechischer Zukunftsfonds (DTZF). See Czech-German Future Fund Die Zeit, 35 diplomacy, 4, 58, 83, 142, 158–159, 201, 216, 229

disability, 187, 189–190, 193–195 discrimination, 11–12, 15, 35, 41, 86, 111, 113, 117–118, 124, 156, 162–163, 184, 192, 216 displaced persons, 31, 33 Dnepropetrovsk, 185 Dobski, Witold, 145–146, 192 Donetsk, 185 Dreher, Jan, 137 Dutch. See Netherlands Eizenstat, Stuart, 2, 40–41, 43, 45, 47, 72, 86, 133–134 endowment fund, xi, xiii, 40, 60, 64, 81, 166–167, 189, 195 enforced sterilization, 35, 195 Estonia, 216–218, 230 ethnicity, 7, 117, 163, 221 European Union (EU), 145 Evers, Lothar, 41, 139 evidence, xv, 8, 12, 18, 66–67, 70, 88, 90, 92, 107, 115, 120, 156, 167, 169, 196–198, 201, 221, 229 exploitation, xiv, xvi, 29–30, 34, 40–42, 54, 56, 84, 90–91, 162, 186, 192, 196, 220 extermination (also physical destruction), 5, 56, 66, 84, 122, 128n43 Fakt, 140 Federal Compensation Law (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz, BEG), 30, 33, 38, 55–56, 66, 80, 90, 92, 158–159 Federal Ministry of Finance, 3, 14, 30, 32, 40, 44, 57–59, 65, 90, 91, 111, 121–122, 128n45, 136 Federal Restitution Law (Bundesrückerstattungsgesetz, BRüG), 158 Ferencz, Benjamin B., 33–34 filtration, 185, 221 Finkelstein, Norman, 96–97 Finland, 107, 109, 120, 219, 235n26 First World War, 34 Flick group, 33, 35

242 • Tanja Penter

Florence, 162 Flug, Noah, 96 Ford group, 39 foreign civilian workers, 29–30, 32, 37–38, 40, 43, 45, 110–112, 115, 184, 201 ‘forgotten victims’, 1, 5, 28, 35–36, 46, 81, 110, 116, 124, 145, 227 Foundation Establishment Act, 189–190 Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation (Fundacja PolskoNiemieckie Pojednanie, FPNP), 19, 23n32, 63, 68–69, 88, 130–132, 134–144, 146–147, 190 Foundation Initiative. See German Foundation Initiative Foundation Law. See German Foundation Law Foundation Topography of Terror, 23n32 France, 94, 108–110, 113, 117, 166, 185 Frankfurt am Main, 10, 31, 86, 90, 92–94, 96 Fundacja Polsko-Niemieckie Pojednanie (FPNP). See Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation Future Fund. See ‘Remembrance and Future Fund’ Gazeta Wyborcza, 135, 138 Geneva Convention, 136 Geneva, 4, 10, 106–107, 112–113, 115, 118–120, 125 Gentz, Manfred, 42, 45 Gerasimov, Valentin Jakovlevič, 213 German Compensation Law (Bundesentschädigungsgesetzt, BEG). See Federal Compensation Law German Czech Future Fund. See Czech-German Future Fund German Democratic Republic (GDR), 18, 30–31, 131 German Economy Foundation Initiative, 59–60, 167

German Federal Archives, 67 German Forced Labour Compensation Programme (GFLCP), 106, 116–119 German Foreign Ministry, 58, 111, 166 German Foundation Act, 189 German Foundation Initiative, xi, xiii, 2, 28, 40–45, 58– 61, 84, 139, 167 German Foundation Law, xi, xiii–xiv, xvi, xviii, 3–6, 8–11, 42, 44–45, 56–58, 60, 65–66, 68, 70–72, 90, 97, 107, 113, 115–116, 121, 123, 130, 134, 136, 146, 167, 188-189, 191, 193, 201, 212, 216, 219, 221, 224, 226, 228, 230, 234n17 German Fund for Needy Victims of Nazi Persecution, 118 German Reich. See Third Reich German reunification, 3, 37, 81–82, 95 German-Czech Declaration on Mutual Relations and Their Future Development, 159 ghetto, xiv, 29, 42, 65–66, 68, 88, 90–91, 93, 115, 121–122, 128n45, 162, 185–186, 190, 192, 200, 205n33, 219 Great Britain, 96, 185 Great Patriotic War, 211, 227 Greece, 107, 114 Green Party (also Greens, Bündnis 90/ DIE GRÜNEN), xiv, 1, 35–37, 40, 58, 81, 131 Hague Protocol, 80 hardship fund, 36, 45, 55, 80, 82, 89, 171, 185, 194 Hausfeld, Michael, 41 health (also medical care), 35–36, 56, 90, 94, 118,120, 124, 144, 157–158, 169, 187, 189, 192, 195–196, 217, 223, 230 Herbert, Ulrich, 36 Heuss, Peter, 90 Heydrich, Reinhard, 157 history politics (also Geschichtspolitik), 11, 164

Index • 243

Holocaust, 11, 16, 19, 27–28, 35–36, 39, 41, 55, 62, 71–72, 80, 83, 86–87, 89–98, 116–118, 124, 128n43, 133, 159, 162, 168, 172, 227 Hombach, Bodo, 40, 42 Home Army (Armia Krajowa), 136 homosexuals, 35 Hoppe, Jens, 90 Hungary, 90–93, 95, 97, 109, 113–115, 117, 120–121 identity politics, 143, 145, 156, 161, 163, 171 IG Farben, 30, 32–33, 80–81 imprisonment (also prison, prisoners, places of imprisonment), xiv, xvi, 3, 8, 14, 29–30, 32, 34, 41–43, 45, 56–57, 66–70, 82, 84–85, 90–91, 108–110, 112–116, 122, 130, 134–135, 144–145, 153n95, 158–160, 162, 165, 183–186, 189–190, 192, 195–197, 200–201, 205n33, 207n69, 219, 221–222, 224, 232, 235n26 injustice, xi–xiv, xvi, xvii, 1–2, 3, 34, 40, 46, 54–58, 63, 69–70, 72–73, 80, 82, 84, 86, 91, 93–94, 97–98, 110, 123–125, 130–131, 133, 146, 158–160, 164–165, 167, 172, 188, 200, 212, 224, 226 Interessengemeinschaft ehemaliger Zwangsarbeiter unter dem NSRegime, 36 International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, 71 International Court of Justice (ICJ), 72 international law, 14, 42, 70, 110–112, 131, 135–136, 188 International Organization for Migration (IOM), 4, 6–7, 10, 12–13, 19, 44, 58, 69, 71, 106–125, 128n43, 128n45, 216 International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen (ITS), 67, 169, 199 Ireland, 83, 107 Iron Curtain, 19, 34, 171, 225, 226

Israel, 2, 36, 41, 55, 58, 79, 83, 86, 91–94, 96–97 158 Italian Military Internees (IMI), xvi, 14, 69–70, 72, 107–108, 110–112, 116, 124, 135 Italy, 69, 72, 110–114, 135 Jałowiecki, Bartosz, 135, 137–139, 140 Jansen, Michael, 137, 139, 144, 191 Jelínek, Tomáš, 162 Jena, 109 Jerusalem, 10, 90, 97 Jewish Claims Conference. See Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany Jews, 2, 4, 6–7, 9, 11, 15–16, 19, 28–32, 37, 39, 41–43, 55, 62, 79, 80–96, 111, 116–117, 121–122, 132, 134, 158, 178n83, 183, 199–200, 207, 219 Jushchenko, Viktor, 201 justice, 7– 9, 11, 17, 19, 28, 68, 72, 95, 123, 131, 133–135, 138–139, 142–143, 145–146, 166–167, 212, 226 Kafka, Tomáš, 172 Kagan, Saul, 81, 83 Kastrup, Dieter, 58 KGB, 184–185, 221 Kharkov, 196 Kiev, 182–183, 197, 200, 224 Knyazev 215 Kohl, Helmut, 186 Kolmer, Felix, 160 Kornblum, John, 40 Koschnick, Hans, 136 Kosovo, 113 Kozłowski, Stefan, 144–145 Krasnyi Berg, 219 Krasucki, Ludwig, 132, 139 Krochmal, Witold, 139 Krupp, 27, 33, 37, 81 Kuchma, Leonid, 189, 195 Lambsdorff, Otto Graf, xv, 42–43 Latvia, 88, 213–217, 219, 222, 231–232

244 • Tanja Penter

Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS), 141 Lebensborn, 115 Limoges, 110 Lithuania, 216–217, 219, 231–232 London Debt Agreement, 31–32, 37, 81 London, 31–32, 37, 81, 96 Lukashenko, Alexander (also Lukashenka), 14, 19, 62, 213–214, 228–229 Luxembourg Agreement, 55, 79 Macedonia, 113 Malysheva, Natal’ia, 215 Mauthausen, 107 media (also press, television), 1, 9, 17, 30, 32, 35–37, 39, 40, 44–45, 60, 81, 92–93, 131, 135–136, 138, 140–141, 143–144, 146, 164–165, 167–168, 212, 214, 224 medical experiments, xiv, 118, 158, 170, 196, 218 memorial culture, 17, 110, 158, 165, 168, 172, 178n83, 182–183, 201, 207n70, 211, 227, 232. See also remembrance memory, xvi, 35, 117, 135, 145, 156, 158–159, 163, 166, 169, 172, 182–184, 197, 201, 224–226, 230 minors. See children Minsk, 200, 225, 233 Mittelbau-Dora memorial, 23n31 Moldova, 88, 192, 205n45 Moravské, 165 Morocco, 91 Moscow, 186, 200, 215, 227, 233 Munich Agreement, 157 Munich, 222 Muszyński, Marian, 141 Najwyższa Izba Kontrolna (NIK), 140 Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Center Schöneweide, 23n32 Neisinger, Thomas, 137, 139 Netherlands (also Dutch), 93, 108–110, 113

Neuborne, Burt, 58, 60–61 New York Times, 96 New York, 10, 39, 58, 79, 86–87, 92–93, 96 New Zealand, 170 Niethammer, Lutz, 27–28, 40, 43, 162 NKVD, 184 Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), 10, 30, 82, 106, 116–117, 139, 142, 166, 168, 184, 215, 217, 221, 229, 231–232 Norway, 107, 113 Nuremberg trials, 5, 30 occupation, 29, 43, 54, 66–67, 69, 90, 108, 114–115, 120, 143, 156, 158, 162, 182–183, 185–186, 188–189, 199–200, 220, 222, 225, 235n26, 236n40 Opel, 166 option clause, xiv, 3, 14, 43, 45, 66, 68, 70, 108, 112, 130, 134–135, 160–161, 163–164, 200, 212, 216, 218–220, 230, 234 Organisation Todt, 113, 163 Organization of Poles Injured by the Third Reich, 36 Ormond, Henry, 80 Ozariči, 219, 230 Palestine, 93 Paris, 143 partisan, 112–115, 144, 165, 169, 172, 189, 222 partner organizations, xii–xv, xvii, 1, 3–4, 6–13, 16, 20, 29–30, 38, 41, 43–44, 54, 58–59, 61–68, 71–72, 79–80, 85–90, 92, 95, 106, 112, 125, 134, 160–161, 188, 190, 212–213, 218, 220, 224–225, 234n23. See also Belarusian foundation ‘Understanding and Reconciliation, Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, International Organization for Migration, Czech-German Future Fund,

Index • 245

Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation, Russian reconciliation foundation, Ukrainian National Foundation ‘Understanding and Reconciliation’ partnership agreement, 87, 134 Parys, Jan, 140 Pavlát, Leo, 168 Pavlo Mela, 107, 114 Pawłoś, Dariusz, 142 payment programme (also payment procedure, payment process), xii–xvii,1, 3–7, 9, 12–14, 16–20, 59–65, 81, 87–88, 96, 107, 130–131, 138–140, 143–146, 160, 190, 193, 211–216, 220 peace treaty, 31, 38, 55, 81 pension, 14, 19, 31, 34–36, 81–82, 89, 92, 94, 128, 128n45, 159, 170, 187, 192, 194–195, 201, 220, 223 persecution, 1, 2, 4– 5, 8, 12, 14–16, 19, 27–29, 31, 33–39, 42–46, 56, 66–70, 80, 82, 84–86, 89–91, 93, 95, 97–98, 106, 108, 111, 113–114, 116–117, 120–124, 131, 159, 163, 167, 172, 184, 186–187, 189, 193–196, 201–202, 212, 226–227, 230 physical destruction. See extermination Poland, 3, 6, 9, 17, 19, 29, 31, 34, 36–39, 41, 49n33, 50n57, 58, 61, 63, 68, 84–86, 112– 113, 120, 130–135, 137, 139, 141–147, 163, 166, 168, 190, 201, 207, 235n35 Polish News Bulletin, 140 Polish Union of Nazi Victims (Polska Unia Ofiar Nazizmu, PUON), 141 Polish-German Treaty of Good Neighbourship, 131 Polski Związek Byłych Więźniów Politycznych. See Association of Former Political Prisoners poverty, 38, 98, 194–195 Prague, 157–158, 167–168

Prawo i Sprawiedliwość. See Law and Justice Primor, Avi, 58 Princz, Hugo, 39 prisoners of war (POW), xvi, 3, 14, 29–30, 32, 42–43, 45, 69–70, 108, 110, 112, 114, 135–136, 184, 200, 202n2, 207n69, 221, 224, 235 Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 110, 156–157, 162 public pressure, 59–60, 83, 190, 218 publicity, 35–36, 82–83, 95, 137, 165–166 Putin, Vladimir, 215, 226–227, 231–233 Rau, Johannes, xvi, 44, 56 reconciliation foundations. See partner organizations reconciliation, xvii, 4, 9, 34, 89, 229, 233 Red Army (also Soviet Army), 192, 213, 222 Red Spaniards, 107 Reichsluftschutzbund, 163 remembrance, 28, 31, 33, 35, 38, 96, 117–118, 183, 213, 227, 230 ‘Remembrance and Future Fund’, xi, 2, 13, 44 reparations, 30–32, 37–38, 110, 131, 158, 164 repatriation, 184–185, 232 repression, 37, 186, 213 resistance, 31, 33, 41–42, 91, 158, 165, 169, 172, 222 restitution, 30, 39, 54, 72, 80, 83, 89, 91, 116, 145, 159 Rheinmetall, 33 Roma Holocaust Survivors – Humanitarian and Social Programmes (RHS-HSP), 118 Roma, 7, 12, 15, 17, 35, 65, 107–108, 116–124, 168, 199, 200 Romania, 15, 17, 90–91, 109, 113, 115, 117–122 Rozhon, Jaroslav, 171

246 • Tanja Penter

Russia, 6, 17–19, 41, 50, 58, 61–63, 71, 84, 88, 126, 126n17, 185–186, 188–191, 194, 197–198, 200–201, 205n45, 211–228, 230–233, 234n18, 234n25, 235n32 Russian reconciliation foundation, 62, 71, 88, 212, 214–217, 219–221, 230–233, 234n18 Rzeczpospolita, 140–141 Saathoff, Günter, 36–37, 40, 58, 141 Sasonov, Alexander, 215 Scandinavia, 170 Schröder, Gerhard, 27, 139 Schutzstaffel (SS), 27, 42, 113, 222 Sdružení osvobozených politických věžnů a pozůstalých (SOPVP). See Association of Liberated Political Prisoners and Their Surviving Dependants Second World War, 5, 9, 14, 16, 17, 27, 30, 44, 54, 67, 93, 124, 132, 157–159, 161, 164–165, 167–168, 171–172, 182–183, 185–187, 192, 195, 201, 213, 216, 221–222, 225 Serbia, 107, 113–114 Shcherditsky, Viktor, 187 Sher, Ze’ev, 97 Siemens, 27, 33 Singer, Israel, 83, 85 Sinti, 35, 65 Šitler, Jiří, 160 Slovakia, 90, 113, 115, 121, 156–159, 165, 166, 170 Slovenia, 113–115, 122 Social Democrats (SPD), xiv, 1, 37, 40, 81, 131 Socialism, 12, 156 Solidarity Election Action (Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność, AWS), 132, 148n8 Solidarność, 132 Soviet Army. See Red Army Soviet military tribunal, 222, 235n30 Soviet Union (USSR), 6, 11, 19, 29, 31, 37–38, 69, 93, 113, 183, 191, 200, 202, 212–213, 219–227, 231

Stalin, Joseph. See Stalinism Stalinism, 185, 202, 217, 226–227, 230, 232 Stowarzyszenie Polaków Kombatantów Poszkodowanych III Rzeszą. See Association of Poles who Suffered under the Third Reich Stowarzyszenie Żydów Kombatantów i Poszkodowanych w II Wojnie Światowej. See Association of Jewish combatants and aggrieved parties in the Second World War Stránský, Oldřich, 160, 167, 171 Stutthof, 107 Sudeten Germans, 159, 164–165 Sudeten regions (also Sudetengau), 157–158, 162 Sułek, Jerzy, 139, 141 supervisory teams (also supervisory commission), 11, 63–65, 87, 142–143, 163, 198 survivors, xiv, xvii, 11, 16, 19, 27, 28, 36, 39, 40–42, 55, 62, 72, 79, 89, 93, 94–98, 117, 119–123, 157–159, 171, 219, 225, 230 Svaz nuceně nasazenýych (SNN). See Association of Forced Labourers Sweden, 120 Swiss banks (also Swiss Banks Settlement), 39, 83, 118 Swiss Fund for Needy Victims of the Holocaust, 118 Switzerland, 15, 17 Sypniewski, Przemysław, 141 Taylor, Gideon, 83 ,95 Technische Nothilfe, 163 Tel Aviv, 92 Teliha, Olena, 183 The Hague, 72 The Holocaust Industry, 96 Third Reich (also German Reich), 5, 29, 66, 69, 84, 90, 133, 157, 162, 164, 189, 200

Index • 247

Tmej, Zdeněk, 164 totalitarianism, 140, 164–165, 186 trade union, xiii, 3 Transnistria, 117, 120–123, 128n43 transparency, 61, 95–96, 118, 122, 137, 160, 172, 229 Trybuna, 138 Tunisia, 91 Turczyński, Jacek, 132 Two plus Four Treaty, 37 Ukraine, 6, 9, 15, 17, 19, 38, 44, 50n57, 58, 61, 84, 126n17,182–202, 205n45, 206n54, 206n64, 207n67, 211, 213–214, 216, 218–221, 223–226, 228, 230–231 Ukrainian National Foundation ‘Understanding and Reconciliation’ (UNF), 62, 88, 212, 186–188, 190–191, 193–196, 198, 200, 234n18, 235n27 Ukranian Association of Prisoners – Victims of Nazism (USVŽF), 197 underage person. See children Underground Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), 183 United Nations, 58 United State Holocaust Memorial, 90–91

United States, xi–xii, 1–2, 6–7, 17, 23n31, 27–28, 33, 35–36, 39–42, 45, 48, 58–61, 82–83, 85–86, 90–91, 93–94, 96–97, 99, 132–133, 159–160, 162, 164, 166, 185, 187–188, 214 Venezuela, 95 Verkhovna Rada, 193, 202 veterans, 136, 183, 187, 202, 212 Voikov, Andrei I., 215 Volkswagen, 27, 37, 40 Warsaw Uprising, 135, 146 Washington, 41, 90, 128n43 Wehrmacht, 109, 113, 222 Weiss, Melvin, 27 Westernhagen, Dörte von, 35 Wilk, Bronisław, 137–138 Wollheim case, 32, 34, 47n11 Wollheim, Norbert, 30–32, 34, 80 World Jewish Congress (WJC), 39–40, 83 Yad Vashem, 90–92 Yeltsin, Boris, 186, 215, 232 Yugoslavia, 107, 113–114, 117 Życie Warszawy, 138