Glossary

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Compensation by the Federal Republic of Germany

 a  Helmut Rumpf, a diplomat and expert in internal law, explained the motivation of the West German government in concluding the Globalabkommen [series of compensation agreements] by citing the Foreign Office as follows:

“It was not only moral and humanitarian motives, however, that gave rise to these agreements, but also the endeavor to ‘expand bilateral relations with the allied and friendly countries by cultivating political and personal contacts.’ In the process, there was to be an effort to ‘conclusively resolve questions that remain open with regard to these states.’ In concrete terms, that included not least of all the aim of reconciling the influential groups of Jewish and other persecutees in some of these countries and reducing the possibility of troubles in bilateral relations that could be caused by these groups, particularly through their influence in the mass media.”

(Helmut Rumpf: “Völkerrechtliche und außenpolitische Aspekte der Wiedergutmachung.” In: Ernst Féaux de la Croix / Helmut Rumpf: Der Werdegang des Entschädigungsrechts unter national- und völkerrechtlichem und politologischem Aspekt (= Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts durch die Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Bundesminister der Finanzen in collaboration with Walter Schwarz, eds., Vol. 3) (Munich: Beck, 1985), pp. 311–346, here p. 334. (Transl. KL))

An intepretation of compensation as a matter between states and not as a settlement of claims filed by individual injured parties against individual allegedly liable parties (that is, firms or persons) had shaped the conflicts over compensation of the Nazis’ victims ever since the Potsdam Agreement of August 2, 1945. In 1953, the Federal German Government concluded the London Agreement, in which the (greatly reduced) payment of German external debt was arranged and all other negotiation related to reparations was deferred until the signing of a peace treaty.

 

The first national-level compensation law, the so-called Federal Supplementary Law (Bundesergänzungsgesetz) of 1953, specified in detail the groups of persons to be compensated, the injuries to be considered, the satisfaction of the compensation claims, and the responsible authorities and procedural formalities. This law was replaced by the Federal Compensation Law, or BEG (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz), three years later. It expanded the group of those entitled to file claims to include corporations, as well as artists and scientists, surviving dependants of murdered victims of persecution, persons who were erroneously persecuted, and persons who were persecuted because they were close to a victim of persecution. Nevertheless, the BEG retained the so-called subjective and personal territoriality principle, according to which benefits could be claimed only by victims of Nazi persecution who were residents of the FRG or West Berlin on the effective date of December 31, 1952 (originally, January 1, 1947), or who had lived within the 1937 borders of the German Reich at the time of persecution and had taken up residence in the FRG or West Berlin by the effective date.

 

The organizations of Nazi victims and resistance fighters in several Western European countries were not inclined to accept this “territoriality principle” codified in the BEG. The pressure they exerted resulted in the concluding of eleven “global agreements” for the group of so-called persons from the West who were victims of persecution (Westverfolgte), in the years 1959 to 1964. The BRD pledged to pay a “global sum” of 876 million DM, which was made available to the government of each state that was party to the agreement. Each government could make an autonomous decision on the distribution of this money, that is, it could also compensate former forced laborers.  a  While the Germans repeatedly emphasized the voluntary nature of the benefits, regarding them as a “final settlement” and strictly refusing to recognize a statutory duty, the opposing parties, such as Greece, declared that they reserved the right “to demand settlement of additional claims based on National Socialist acts of violence, if it should come [...] to a general review of the claims that were shelved in the London Agreement on German External Debts.[1]

 

Overall, the concluding of the “global agreements” was successful from the Germans’ standpoint: They succeeded in removing a potential stumbling block to European integration; settling even pending border issues in the agreements, in the case of the neighboring Western states; demonstrating to the “East” the unity of the “West” in the Cold War era; and—right in the midst of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (1961)—improving Germany’s image abroad.

 

While an agreement with the NATO and European Community partners proved indispensable in the course of integration with the West, the FRG long persisted in strictly rejecting any compensation of the Nazis’ victims in Eastern Europe; the Federal German Government made an exception solely for victims of human experimentation in the concentration camps.[2] The social-liberal SPD-FDP coalition dropped this blockade in the 1970s as part of its policy of détente. The “Brioni Formula”—named for the island in the Mediterranean where Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito and West German Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt (SPD) met in April 1973—provided for settlement of the “still-pending issues from the past” through “long-term cooperation in economic and other areas.”[3] Thus Yugoslavia and Poland, for example, obtained loans at reduced rates of interest. In Poland’s case, there was also a lump-sum payment of pension claims in the amount of 1.3 billion, though the Poles had to promise as a quid pro quo to allow 120,000 so-called Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) to leave the country. Thereby the West German government succeeded once again in linking the assertion of its own claims and interests to the issue of compensation. If the FRG had been forced to pay the individual pension claims of former Polish forced laborers, they would have totaled almost 8 billion DM.

 

In the 1980s, parliamentary efforts made by the opposition parties in the Bundestag to obtain  compensation for previously excluded groups of persecutees were unsuccessful. The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (Vertrag über die abschließende Regelung in Bezug auf Deutschland, or Two Plus Four Agreement) between the FRG and the GDR on the one hand and the Allies of the anti-Hitler coalition (USA, France, Great Britain, Soviet Union) on the other put an end to the unclear legal situation in September 1990: Now individual claims could be lodged. To forestall compensation claims from so-called Ostverfolgte (East European victims of Nazism), “global agreements” that continued the “new Eastern policy” of the Brandt era were concluded with Poland, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic countries, and the Czech Republic between 1991 and 1998. In view of the large number of victims of Nazism who were still alive (more than 2 million), they received pension payments amounting to only 20 to 40 DM per month.[4]

 

Following a class action suit filed by the former forced laborer Hugo Princz and fellow victims against the FRG and several German companies in the United States, agreements were concluded between the U.S. government and the German government in 1995 and 1998: These agreements provided for compensation of the plaintiffs in the amount of 3.1 million DM; however, the money was paid not to the victims but to an intermediary organization, to avoid giving the impression that the government of the FRG thought of itself as obligated to pay such compensation and was acknowledging its responsibility to do so. In other word, the FRG consistently pursued the course it had adopted in the 1950s and abided by its rejection of comprehensive compensation for forced labor performed in the Nazi era. A change occurred in the late 1990s, when former forced laborers under the Nazis filed large numbers of class action lawsuits against German firms in U.S. courts, ultimately leading to the launching of the German Economy Foundation Initiative.

(GK/PEH; transl. KL)



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[pdf] Peer Heinelt_Financial Compensation for Nazi Forced Laborers

  

Literature

Hennies, Jörg Hagen: Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit vor und unter der Geltung des Stiftungsgesetzes vom 2.8.2000. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2006.

Herbert, Ulrich: “Nicht entschädigungsfähig? Die Wiedergutmachungsansprüche der Ausländer.” In: Ludolf Herbst / Constantin Goschler, eds.: Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989, pp. 273–302.

Hockerts, Hans Günter: “Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa. Eine einführende Skizze.” In: Hans Günter Hockerts / Claudia Moisel / Tobias Winstel, eds.: Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung. Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa 1945–2000. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006, pp. 7–58.

Rumpf, Helmut: “Völkerrechtliche und außenpolitische Aspekte der Wiedergutmachung.” In: Ernst Féaux de la Croix / Helmut Rumpf: Der Werdegang des Entschädigungsrechts unter national- und völkerrechtlichem und politologischem Aspekt (= Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts durch die Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Bundesminister der Finanzen in collaboration with Walter Schwarz, eds., Vol. 3). Munich: Beck, 1985, pp. 311–346.

Surmann, Rolf: “Trugbild. Die deutsche Entschädigungsverweigerung gegenüber den NS-Opfern.” In: Ulrike Winkler, ed.: Stiften gehen. NS-Zwangsarbeit und Entschädigungsdebatte. Cologne: PapyRossa, 2000, pp. 186–204.

[1] Rolf Surmann: “Trugbild. Die deutsche Entschädigungsverweigerung gegenüber den NS-Opfern.” In: Ulrike Winkler, ed.: Stiften gehen. NS-Zwangsarbeit und Entschädigungsdebatte (Cologne: PapyRossa, 2000), pp. 186–204, here p. 196. (Translated by KL)

[2] The FRG concluded corresponding agreements with Yugoslavia in 1961, the ČSSR in 1969, Hungary in 1971, and Poland in 1972.

[3] Hans Günter Hockerts: “Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa. Eine einführende Skizze.” In: Hans Günter Hockerts / Claudia Moisel / Tobias Winstel, eds.: Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung. Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa 1945–2000 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), pp. 7–58, here p. 42. (Translated by KL)

[4] See Surmann: Trugbild, p. 199; and Hockerts: Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte, p. 51ff.