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June 22, 2001/Tamuz 1, 5761, Vol. 53, No.38
Slave compensation to begin
MICHAEL J. JORDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - Expressions of triumph and relief greeted the news that Nazi-persecuted slave laborers are finally beginning to receive compensation from Germany.
It wasn't long before the cordial mood was punctured.
The first 10,000 applicants soon will soon get payments of 10,000 German marks (about $4,400) each, officials of the Claims Conference announced June 19.
But Roman Kent, a renowned figure in the Holocaust survivor community, put the $4.5 billion compensation fund in a different perspective for the assembled media.
Kent, a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto and five years in three separate concentration camps, blasted away at those he said were so preoccupied with the money as to obscure the crux of the issue - "historic and moral justice," he said, including full acknowledgment of German guilt.
Kent lashed into the German government - venting directly at the German representative in the audience, Ambassador to the United Nations Dieter Kastrup - for dragging its feet for years; at media that allegedly concentrated too much on dollars and cents; and at lawyers with what he called "the glitter of gold in their eyes."
Fifty-one lawyers have divvied up legal fees of $52 million - far below the lawyers' normal contingency fee.
The payments will be drawn from a fund, established in February 1999 by the German government and a group of German businesses.
In all, up to 1 million former slave and forced laborers under the Nazis will receive payments from Germany.
Meanwhile, one New York lawyer, Melvyn Weiss, reportedly will receive a windfall of $6.3 million.
Burt Neuborne, a professor at New York University Law School who was awarded $4.4 million, told The New York Times he began work on litigatin in 1997 not expecting to be paid.
Germany has extended the deadline for applying for compensation from Aug. to Dec. 31.
American survivors should call 1-800-697-6064, or search the Internet at www.claimscon.org.
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