Compensation

Forced laborers in Germany were largely excluded from compensation payments for many years. Neither the regulations enacted at the state level in the postwar period under pressure from the Allies nor the later federal laws, the Federal Compensation Act of 1953, the Federal Compensation Act (BEG) of 1956, and the BEG Final Act of 1965, provided for compensation for forced labor. Forced laborers who were imprisoned in a concentration camp could receive compensation for imprisonment if they were among those entitled to it (e.g. Jewish prisoners). Under the BEG, the group of beneficiaries was limited to persons who had been persecuted during the Nazi era for political, “racial”, religious or ideological reasons. Also excluded were persons who resided in states with which the Federal Republic did not maintain diplomatic relations, i.e. Poland and the Soviet Union, among others. In the London Debt Agreement signed in 1953, compensation for foreign forced laborers was legally defined as a “reparation claim” and thus postponed until a final peace treaty was negotiated. Some Western European states received payments under global agreements between 1959 and 1964, and several large corporations also paid several million DM to the Jewish Claims Conference. It was not until the political upheaval in Eastern Europe that the compensation issue began to move again. Under the “2+4” agreement of 1990, which was interpreted as a peace treaty, global payments were made to Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, but the amount of these payments did not meet the needs of those affected. Only political and legal pressure from the USA on the state and some companies led in 2000 to the establishment of a foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility, Future” endowed with capital from business and the state for the purpose of humanitarian support for former forced laborers.