Nazi Payment 'Disappointing'

Attorneys for Nazi slave-labor survivors said Thursday the German government and industries have offered $3.3 billion to compensate for World War II atrocities and labeled the offer Â"an enormous disappointment.Â"

Â"I told the German delegation they have done more harm to the German government and German people than they can ever imagine,Â" said Mel Weiss, an attorney for survivors in class-action suits in U.S. courts.

Weiss made the statement to reporters in front of the State Department after hearing the proposal made to a meeting of international negotiators by the chief German envoy to the talks, Otto Lambsdorff.

Â"The offer amounts to about $300 million or less in 1940 terms,Â" Weiss said, charging that German industry has grown vastly wealthy in the years since it paid nearly nothing for the labor of prisoners of the Nazi regime during World War II.

Â"This is disgusting,Â" remarked the lawyer, adding that one-third of the money is supposed to come from the German government. He said that means industry came up with about $2.1 billion of the total after building up enormous wealth "on the backs of these victims."

Mel Weiss, an attorney for survivors in class-action lawsuits.

He continued, Â"I told them that we are not going to walk away from the table... despite the fact that there is such enormous disappointment.Â" Earlier this week, Weiss declined to say how much survivors demanded, but he said it far exceeds the $20 billion that had been recently reported.

Lambsdorff and other German negotiators were still in the meeting and not immediately available for comment. He had said in an interview Wednesday that he thought the offer would be Â"justified and dignified.Â"

The offer was the first formal money proposal put on the table after months of negotiations on how to compensate an estimated 1 million to 2.5 million people forced into labor for World War II Germany.

Some representatives for victims have placed full-page ads in prominent U.S. newspapers, focusing negative attention on the most prominent German companies involved in the talks. Ads highlighting the use of Nazi slaves by Mercedes-Benz and Bayer Pharmaceuticals have sought to pressure the firms to raise their payment offers.

Â"I can only say that what I'm going to present... is the result of very tough efforts in the German Republic to put this huge amount of money together,Â" Lambsdorff said in an interview Wednesday. Â"And I would not have come here if I would not feel i a position to defend it as a justified, dignified offer.Â"

In the first day of a two-day session at the State Department, negotiators Wednesday made progress on such issues as how U.S. courts will handle any future lawsuits by forced laborers, Lambsdorff said.

He said he Â"would be happyÂ" if agreement on all issues could be reached by the end of the year.

Representatives of survivors, German companies that used forced labor and several governments have been meeting for months to negotiate a plan under which the German government and industry would set up two foundations to handle the compensation.

The talks originally involved 16 German companies sued in U.S. courts, but about two dozen more are reported to be planning to contribute funds as well.

The State Department has said negotiations will get money to more people, and faster, than the lawsuits would. Part of the agreement would be some kind of U.S. government statement discouraging future suits and encouraging the role of foundations in compensation.

The State Department estimates 12 million workers were forced to work in German industry and agriculture during World War II. Some produced materials for the war, and some took over jobs from German men, freeing them to fight.

The largest number of surviving victims are Eastern European Christians from countries overrun early by Hitler's forces.

In addition to the United States and Germany, officials say the other countries involved in the negotiations are Israel, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and the Czech Republic.