Polish foundation begins payments to ex-Nazi slaves

The Warsaw-based Polish-German Reconciliation Foundation, representing an estimated half million Polish ex-Nazi slave and forced labourers, is making the payments using Polish funds after legal hurdles emerged last week to the distribution of payments from the German fund.

But many former slave labourers themselves have voiced opposition to the partial payments, saying the half-measure will take the pressure off officials responsible for the German fund to make good on its promise to compensate an estimated 1.5 million former Nazi slaves world-wide. "The idea of partial payments is a scandal," Ludwik Krasicki, head of a Warsaw-based Jewish veterans' organization said, quoted in Gazeta Wyborcza.

Hopes for the speedy release of compensation payments from the 4.7 billion dollar German fund were thwarted last Wednesday when a U.S. judge denied a request made by German companies for legal immunity from any further slave labour compensation litigation before U.S. courts.

German industry which has split responsibility with the German government to fund an indemnification package stipulated that the legal immunity measure was a bottom-line prerequisite to the release of compensation payments.

The delay has evoked strong protest among ex-Nazi slaves and Poland's top politicians with Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek saying last week he intends to meet personally with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to resolve the payment delays.

Over the weekend a group of German citizens from the northern village of Groedersby, frustrated with the apparent inaction of German industry to make good on compensation promises, took matters into their own hands by presenting a 2,000 mark compensation cheque to a Pole, Henryk Baran, who was used as a forced farm labourer in their village during World War II.

(la/dpa)