In June 1998, Gerhard Schröder, then the Social Democrats' (SPD) candidate for chancellor, announced that, if elected, he would set up a collective fund to compensate those who were forced to work as slave laborers under the Nazi regime. A year and a half later, after agonizing negotiations held on both sides of the Atlantic, threats of a walkout and a series of blistering full-page ads in the "New York Times" lambasting German companies that had already agreed to contribute to the fund, it was Chancellor Gerhard Schröder who made the final move that prompted Michael Witti, a Munich lawyer representing the victims to say, "The deal is done."
Well, yes and no. There will indeed be some sort of signing ceremony in Berlin on Friday but precisely what will be signed has yet to be worked out. Nevertheless, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who would have been in town anyway for a G8 meeting, and US Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who has led the delegation of US lawyers representing the former slave laborers, are penciled in for the ceremony.
So, too, of course, is former German Economics Minister Otto Lambsdorff who has headed up the other end of the negotiating table. Just last week, Lambsdorff was insisting that a total of 8 billion marks (nearly $4.2 billion) was the final offer from German companies (5 billion) and the government (3 billion). His rhetoric later eased up when he suggested that the German side would consider a reasonable offer for a compromise from the victims' lawyers. That's said to have come in the form of a total of 10 billion marks ($5.1 billion) from the Germans and an additional billion or so from US companies that had subsidiaries in Germany during the war.
On Tuesday, Lambsdorff told the "Berliner Zeitung" that this offer was "finally worthy of discussion" and that he and Chancellor Schröder agreed that "industry cannot and should not be able to afford a higher contribution. The rest will have to be picked up by the government." Another 2 billion, in other words.
Which means that, as the deal stands, the companies that willingly and often eagerly made use of slave labor during the Nazi era will put up half the bill and German taxpayers will pay the other half. As for where that 5 billion will come from, Finance Minister Hans Eichel says it definitely won't come from the federal budget he's worked all year at cutting down. The government will simply have to sell some of its holdings in private industry, though he hasn't as yet named names.
Also unclear is what all this means for the victims themselves. One of the reasons the negotiations have been so complex is that the victims have been divided up into categories according to the severity of the horrors the Nazis put them through. Former slave laborers and those held in concentration camps may receive 15,000 marks each (around $7,700), according to Lambsdorff, while those who were forced to work under less severe conditions may receive 5,000 or 6,000 marks (around $2,800). Some lawyers worry, though, that whole groups may be left out.
This is the stickiest issue yet to be resolved, but Chancellor Schröder has said that after exchanging letters with US President Bill Clinton, he has "well-founded hope" that the final deal can indeed be signed on Friday.
In other news, the Greens, one year into their reign as junior partners of the governing coalition, have finally decided to stop quibbling among themselves and present a united front on the issue nearest and dearest to their hearts, Germany's exit from nuclear power. This should happen within 30 years, they now agree, and at least two plants need to be offline by the end of the current legislative period in 2002.
Parliamentary faction leader Kerstin Müller announced after the meeting in Berlin that the Greens will want to meet with the SPD "as soon as possible" in order to establish a solid government policy and get talks with the nuclear industry moving again.
An update on Friday's "Digest": While some videos are still being reviewed for their potential to incite violence and generally mess up German youth (films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick, for example), Berlin's "Videodrom" was allowed to open again on Tuesday following the November 23 raid that shut it down.
As Andreas Kopietz writes in the "Berliner Zeitung", "Many believe that had the bureaucrat who sealed off the rooms known that he wasn't closing down some backyard video store, he might have acted differently." The forced closure of the extensive archive had sparked protests from the likes of directors Volker Schlöndorff ("The Tin Drum") and Tom Tykwer ("Run Lola Run").
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News of the compensation deal broke late on Tuesday, but Edmund L. Andrews and John Hooper nevertheless manage comprehensive reports in the "New York Times" and the "Guardian", respectively. Hooper: "The victims' lawyers were... aware that the advanced age of their clients meant there was a powerful argument for accepting a swift deal, however unsatisfactory. Hence, the lack of euphoria last night." Andrews quotes Stuart Eizenstat on his hopes that the deal truly is done: "It would be a wonderful way for Germany to make a moral statement at the end of the century that would have lasting effects into the next century." Free registration required
For the most part, Europe is Y2K-ready, reports Tom Buerkle in the "International Herald Tribune".
"Using 3.8 million watts of electricity and sending light 70 kilometers into the sky, it should be visible as far away as Dresden and Hamburg. A crew of 760 will work for five days to set it up, laying 70 kilometers of cable." Steve Kettmann not only has the tech specs on Berlin's controversial New Year's Eve "Art in Heaven" light show in "Wired News", but also hears conflicting opinions on whether or not it's too reminiscent of the Nazis' "Light Dome".
"Greetings from Munich, the Black Hole of the Millennium." Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler, is in "the city that nurtured the Nazi movement" and he's in a foul mood. But the upside, as he writes in the "New York Observer", is that he's there with director Jim Sheridan for a projected film based on the story of "some forgotten heroes of the 20th century, the anti-Hitler journalists at the 'Munich Post'."
"Soldiers, housewives, cops, journalists, grandparents, activists, a professor, a dirigible pilot, a businesswoman and ravers in the Berlin Love Parade all contribute their little share to a mosaic of the German nation in war and peace." Michael Scott Moore reviews Günter Grass's My Century in "Salon".
"Less than a year and a half after buying the nation's premier publishing house, the Bertelsmann media conglomerate is poised to form a partnership with an American icon of popular literature, Time Inc.'s Book-of-the-Month Club." Doreen Carvajal broke the story in Tuesday's "NYT", later confirmed at a press conference. Also: SUV's roll over Europe, reports John Tagliabue, and so, too, does "American-style institutional money management," meaning more assertive European shareholders, writes Hilary Rosenberg. Free registration required
"The stereotyped British view of the Germans on holiday as arrogant breakfast-snaffling louts who grab the best places by the swimming pool has been contradicted by an opinion poll," reports Andrew Gimson in the "Daily Telegraph".
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