Jewish Groups To Meet Germany's Rau On Holocaust

Negotiations between the United States and Germany that also include Jewish advocacy groups and class-action lawyers representing Holocaust victims were set to resume on Tuesday in Bonn. At issue is a proposed new, billion-dollar fund to compensate people who were compelled to work for the Nazis as slaves and forced labourers.
Since World War II, Germany has paid more than 100 billion marks ($52 billion) in compensation to Holocaust victims, except for former slave and forced labourers.
Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), said Israel Singer, secretary general of the WJC, will meet in Bonn with Rau as part of overall discussions about the new fund. Gideon Taylor, executive vice president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, another advocacy group, also was due to attend the meeting.
While Steinberg did not rule out asking the German government for an apology, he said, "What we're talking about is moral responsibility. Some people speak in terms of an apology but I think when you accept responsibility and accept the burden of history, that is more meaningful than a vacuous apology. It is part of the effort to make it clear that these talks involve not only a monetary component, but as we always have insisted, the moral resolution."
Jewish advocacy groups have stressed the need to make sure that the historical record of the Holocaust period is updated to reflect details that have not been known until recently. A fresh demand made by the World Council of Orthodox Jewish Communities reflected that position.
The group said it wanted Deutsche Bank AG, a founding member of the fund, to release all documents that show how it helped finance the building of the Auschwitz death camp, along with any other papers detailing the bank's links to the Nazis and the profits it reaped as a result, said Mel Urbach, the council's general counsel.
Deutsche Bank in early February said newly uncovered documents showed the bank had ties with firms that built the death camp, as well as credit links to one firm that made incineration units and funded another whose subsidiary made the Zyklon B gas used to kill people at Auschwitz.
"They've taken the sting out the documents by telling us about them, but we haven't seen the whole package," Urbach said. "Before we could recommend settlement to the (Holocaust) survivor community, we would like to get full disclosure," Urbach added. The rest of German industry also should open its historical archives, he said.