Friday June 15 12:05 PM ET

First Transfers of Holocaust Slave Payments

BERLIN (Reuters) - Around a million Nazi-era slave workers and other Holocaust survivors came a step closer to compensation on Friday as Germany said it had transferred funds to national foundations set up to distribute the cash.

German officials in Berlin said partner organizations in Poland, the Czech Republic and the United States-based Jewish Claims Conference had been sent payments from a $4.4 billion fund jointly financed by German state and industry.

Under an international accord reached last year, it is up to national organizations to make payments to individual victims.

Most surviving members of Adolf Hitler's 10 million-strong army of forced laborers come from behind the former Iron Curtain and missed out on previous compensation rounds.

The German government and industry agreed to come up with the fund over two years ago after U.S.-based lawyers launched class action suits against some of the country's top firms, many of whom benefited from the forced labor during World War Two.

Wrangles over the amount of compensation to be offered and delays in collecting the industry's contribution to the fund have held back payments to the elderly victims or their heirs.

Payments are due to range up to 15,000 marks ($6,640) for so-called slave workers who were meant to be worked to death in concentration camps, with other categories of victims entitled to
up to 5,000 marks.

The Polish-German Reconciliation Foundation, the Polish organization responsible for processing the payments, said on Friday it expected to receive the first installment worth 97 million zlotys ($24.62 million) early next week.

``The next tranche should reach us at the end of July,'' foundation chief Bartosz Jalowiecki said. Foundation officials expect the next payment to amount to 600-700 million zlotys.

($1-2.259 Mark)

($1-3.940 Zloty)

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