Berlin - The German parliament voted yesterday to unblock payments from a $4.5 billion fund to compensate second World War slave labourers for their sufferings toiling under the Nazi regime over half a century ago.
The Bundestag gave its overwhelming approval, removing the last hurdle in a lengthy approval process so that payments can now start to more than a million survivors, most of them from formerly communist Eastern Europe who missed out on earlier rounds of West German post-war compensation.
The government will evenly split the DM10 billion bill for the fund with German firms, including big names like car-maker Volkswagen and insurer Allianz, which were prompted to set up the fund by lawsuits launched in US courts by survivors several years ago. As of this week, 6,351 firms had contributed.