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This clip shows the staff and offices of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and explores the work of the organisation in seeking restitution for Holocaust survivors from the Second World War, including those who were slave labourers in German industry. Karen Heilig from the Claims Conference makes a distinction between the work of this non-profit organisation and lawyers who have launched class actions on behalf of Holocaust survivors. She says slave labourers want an apology from the German Government.

Educational value points

• About 12 million people worked as slave or forced labourers in Germany and its occupied territories during the Second World War (1939–45), representing the greatest mass use of forced labour since slavery ended in the 19th century. Forced labourers came from occupied countries such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia, but also included prisoners of war from those countries, while most slave labourers were Jews interned in concentration camps.

• The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, founded in 1951 in New York, seeks financial restitution, support programs and the return of property for survivors of the Holocaust. The Claims Conference, in partnership with Israel, has negotiated and distributed compensation payments from the German and Austrian governments, as well as recovering German-Jewish property that was seized by the Nazis or left unclaimed after the War.

• The Claims Conference, the governments of the USA, Israel and eastern European states occupied by Germany in the Second World War, and lawyers for the victims of Nazi persecution, negotiated with Germany to secure reparations for forced and slave labourers. In 2000 the German Government and industry set up a fund with 10 billion deutschmark (about $8.4 billion) to compensate victims, who received payments of up to 15,000 deutschmark (about $12,600) each.

• As the narration states, slave labourers were worked to death under a policy known as 'Vernichtung durch Arbeit’ or 'extermination through labour’. They were forced to work seven days a week and were usually given meagre daily rations, often just a bowl of thin soup and a piece of bread. Forced labourers, who were transported to and interned in Germany, were not worked to death; however, they still endured inhumane treatment.

• The treatment of slave labourers was part of the 'final solution’ or 'Endlösung’ of Germany’s Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, which involved the systematic extermination of people whom the Nazis considered to be subhuman and racially impure, including Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and the disabled. About 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews were murdered by the Nazis in work and concentration camps during the Second World War. This genocide is known as the Holocaust.

• Slave and forced labourers worked in agriculture, construction and industry, particularly in munitions factories, and were integral to the German war economy, freeing men to fight, but also helping to produce the machinery of war. Otto Lambsdorff, who represented Germany in negotiations to secure reparations for these workers, acknowledged that 'there was hardly a German company that did not use slave and forced labor during World War II’ (http://www.nyed.uscourts.gov).

• Karen Heilig stresses that an apology from the German Government is crucial to former slave and forced labourers, and this suggests that, for survivors, an acknowledgement of their ordeal is more important than money. In 1999 German President Johannes Rau issued an apology, in which he said, 'for many it is not really money that matters. What they want is for their suffering to be recognised as suffering, and for the injustices done to them to be named injustices’ (http://www.germany.info).

• Paying for the Past is an 'expository’ documentary, a style that relies on the spoken word to advance an argument and that uses images to support the argument. For example, interviews with Claims Conference staff are used to reinforce the narrated distinction between the work of the Claims Conference, a non-profit organisation, and lawyers who have mounted a class action on behalf of Holocaust survivors and who will get a percentage of any compensation.

Street scene in front of a building, then inside the building and the offices of The Claims Conference where the rest of the clip takes place, beginning the following voice-over.
Narrator In another part of town there’s an organisation called The Claims Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Since World War II this organisation has negotiated for compensation for Holocaust survivors. Most Jewish slave labourers were part of Germany’s 'destruction through work’ policy. The Claims Conference seek restitution for its Holocaust survivors and provides support for social welfare and therefore have a different objective to the lawyers.

Karen Heilig, Claims Conference employee The class action lawyers are not a cohesive group but there are undoubtably many of them that have a financial interest in this. I mean, this is what class action lawyers do. They bring lawsuits and then they want to get a percentage for their fees. And we have no financial interest – we’re a non-profit organisation. We have no interests except for the best interests of Holocaust survivors.

Ruth Meyer, Claims Conference employee A lot of it is just people who want you to listen to them and just to have somebody who’ll hear them, hear them cry and will really then just feel better and be able to go on with their day and their lives because somebody has just listened and sometimes it’s as simple as that.

Man 1 As per our conversation …

Karen Heilig Recently, after the reunification of Germany in 1990, all property in the former East Germany that is heirless because the whole family was wiped out or belonged to communities that are totally destroyed comes back to the Claims Conference. We get the properties back and we sell them. We give to organisations that build old age homes, give home care or other services to Holocaust survivors.

A meeting room.
Man 2 We want to put the program together that’s going to be most helpful and effective for survivors that are the most vulnerable.

Karen Heilig For us, the overriding factor is people are old, people are dying, we want a just settlement and we want to do it and we want to do it now and we want an apology. This apology is crucial and I’m working on a draft that we would like, I’m working with Holocaust survivors to write it.