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December 1st, 2008

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Millions in compensation paid to Czechs for WWII

Negotiators say morals, not money, is key

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 11th, 2007 issue

For decades after concentration camps across Europe were liberated, Eastern survivors waited in neglect behind the Iron Curtain while those in the West received restitution and apologies.

“[They] thought they would be forgotten forever,” says Tomáš Kraus, executive director of the Federation of Jewish Communities.

While West Germany was busy paying out millions of marks to Nazi victims living in the United States, Israel and Western Europe, those in the Soviet bloc received nothing.

But thanks to growing public, legal and media pressure, an embarrassed Germany entered into international negotiations that are finally paying off for Czechs who were victims of forced labor during the Holocaust.

Last month, the German government and companies finished paying out 4.4 billion euros ($6 billion/126.2 billion Kč) to 1.7 million people worldwide for their forced labor during the war, according to Jiří Šitler, the chief Czech negotiator who works at the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Representatives worldwide had been negotiating the enormous deal as early as 1999, ending talks in 2001.

Of the total sum, 207 million euros went to about 76,000 Czechs. Ninety percent of these people were not in concentration camps but were forced to work for the Reich, says Tomáš Jelínek, deputy chairman of the Czech Council for Nazi Victims. Of the remaining 10 percent, who were in camps, only half were Jews since most Jews had either died or emigrated to Israel, the United States or Western Europe.

About 4,000 to 6,000 people who were in camps live in the Czech Republic today, he says.

These payments do not include the money victims have been paid for stolen property, which returned some 17 million euros to about 4,400 Czechs, according to Šitler.

Still, they represent an acknowledgment of moral responsibility, and that is the point, Kraus says.

“You cannot compensate people who lost their whole families,” he says. “As a human gesture, I think we have reached what could have been reached. … It was for [survivors] really a satisfaction that someone was telling them, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

Jelínek agrees. “Compared to the original loss, it’s only a gesture,” he says. In fact, less than 1 percent of the originally estimated $11.6 billion owed to Czechs was ever paid. “And it would never be paid.”

The question now, in Kraus’ view, is how to handle the next step. For one thing, there are still survivors who cannot make ends meet without these payments. But that’s not the only issue. As the last generation of survivors dies, and restitution programs draw to a close, the individual experiences of the Holocaust need to be shifted into the collective memory, he says.

“In the beginning of the 1990s, no one would dare to think that [Czech] Nazi victims would get compensation,” Jelínek says.

As far as a newly unified Germany was concerned, it was a closed matter, he says. West Germany had fulfilled its obligation, and East Germany, which was supposed to pay millions of crowns to East European victims, no longer existed.

At the time, the Czech Republic was the only country in Central Europe where there had never been a compensation program for Nazi victims, according to Šitler.

In 1994, the Czech government, though not responsible for payments, decided to give humanitarian aid to victims. This didn’t look good for Germany, Šitler says.

Meanwhile, a speech by President Václav Havel, in which he pointed out that Czechs were paying their own restitution, brought the issue to the surface of public debate and helped to jump-start the first major compensation program, the Czech-German Future Fund. The fund, which began in 1998, will end payments to about 8,000 Czechs later this year.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com

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