Glossary

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Compensation

In the years immediately following the war, the Federal Republic of Germany already was placing importance on an understanding of compensation as an arrangement between states that precluded individual claims. In the following decades, however, individuals—often survivors of the concentration camps—and organizations such as the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany engaged in often lengthy negotations with the Federal Republic of Germany, filed actions against West German firms, and reached settlement agreements with those firms, in a battle to obtain material compensation for imprisonment in concentration camps, impaired health, pecuniary loss, and forced labor. Major landmarks in the history of the fight for restitution were the Wollheim lawsuit and the Federal Compensation (or Indemnification) Law (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz) in the 1950s and finally, in the late 1990s, the disputes over payment of compensation for National Socialist forced labor by the German economy.