$401 Million to Be Paid to 130,681 Nazi-Era Slave Laborers; Largest One-Day Holocaust Payment Ever Made.

Class-Action Suits Led to Settlements with German Government and
   Business and Swiss Banks; Total Slave Labor Payments Come to $1.3
                        Billion in Three Years

     New Evidence of Holocaust Documented Through Claims Research

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc. (Claims Conference), the body responsible for implementing German slave labor compensation payments to Jewish Holocaust survivors, is making the largest-ever one-day Holocaust compensation payment this week. It will distribute a total of $401.1 million to 131,681 Holocaust survivors living in 62 countries who performed slave and forced labor.

This represents a second payment to former Nazi-era slave and forced laborers who received initial distributions totaling $703 million beginning in 2001.

The payments are the result of U.S. class-action lawsuits filed in 1999 by Holocaust survivors against German companies that used slave and forced labor during World War II. The lawsuits brought about negotiations that led to the establishment of the DM 10 billion German Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future."

In addition, the Claims Conference has made slave labor payments from the Swiss Banks Settlement, reached in U.S. District Court under Chief Judge Edward R. Korman of the Eastern District of New York, also as a result of class-action lawsuits. These payments are compensation for wartime Nazi and German business profits transacted through Swiss banks. The settlement released Swiss Banks from any claims from Nazi victims relating to companies that profited from slave labor and deposited such revenues and profits in Switzerland. Under this portion of the program, the Claims Conference has paid more than $217 million to 150,140 survivors.

With this week's payments, the Claims Conference will have distributed since 2001 more than $1.3 billion in compensation payments to Jewish former slave and forced laborers, resulting from Holocaust class-action lawsuits.

"These payments represent the first time that German industry as a whole has acknowledged its role in Holocaust-era crimes. They are a small measure of justice, for which survivors have waited for more than 60 years," said Gideon Taylor, Claims Conference Executive Vice President.

"In three years, the Claims Conference has worked with tremendous efficiency and speed to distribute these funds to survivors in their lifetimes. It has been an enormous task carried out with skill and compassion. These recoveries have made a tremendous difference to tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors," said attorney Mel Weiss of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman LLP, one of the lead attorneys in the cases that brought about the settlement.

The Program for Former Slave and Forced Laborers entailed levels of technology, staffing, and international coordination unprecedented in the Claims Conference's previous half-century. To meet the challenge of processing 265,000 applications in eight languages within a relatively short time period, the Claims Conference created an advanced system of computerized processing. Every application form was digitally scanned. By relying on state-of-the art programs that were tailored to the project and were highly adaptable, the Claims Conference achieved full electronic processing, with significant advantages in data collection, integration and investigation.

"Thousands of elderly, frail survivors in countries around the world have great needs that are increasing as they age. The remarkable speed of these payments, distributed at low cost, will greatly assist them in their last years and hopefully make their lives just a little bit easier," said Professor Burt Neuborne of New York University law school, who helped negotiate the settlement and sits on the Board of Directors of the German Foundation.

Half of the DM 10 billion Foundation's funding is provided by the German government and half by the country's businesses. German industry and business benefited from slave and forced labor during World War II. In addition, the Nazis utilized such labor in building railroads and air bases, in military production, and in concentration camps.

Under the German law creating the fund for these payments, the compensation had to be paid in two installments, in order to ensure adequate funds to make first payments to all eligible applicants. Included in the survivors being sent payments this week are 33,510 in the U.S., who will receive a total of $103.6 million, and 61,901 in Israel, who will receive a total of $191.4 million.

Documenting Claims

"This program is as much about restituting history as it is about restituting money. There are 131,000 Jewish survivors of camps and ghettos alive today and we will not allow their names to be forgotten or their stories to be lost," said Gideon Taylor.

The program will leave behind it a list of the names of virtually all Jewish Holocaust survivors alive today, a comprehensive identification of almost all places where Jews were incarcerated during the Holocaust, and finally a small symbolic acknowledgement by Germany of the horrors that hundreds of thousands of individuals endured 60 years ago.

To help survivors document their claims to meet the requirements of the German Foundation, the Claims Conference undertook pro-active research in 150 Holocaust-related archives scattered in 30 countries around the world. Claims Conference researchers scoured paper and microfilmed lists -- often handwritten and not alphabetized -- in order to match the names of claimants to any documentation that would meet the requirements established by the German Foundation.

Sources of information included concentration camp lists, ghetto registers, transport lists, labor battalion rosters, lists of slave laborers in factories and plants, lists of inmates on work gangs, lists of prisoners released or liberated from concentration camps by Allied forces or humanitarian groups, lists of recipients of packages sent by friends and relatives through the Red Cross, and testimonials of survivors produced in the immediate aftermath of the Nazi occupation, among others.

The German Foundation was established in 2000 by German government and industry after negotiations with the Claims Conference; attorneys representing Holocaust survivors; and the governments of the U.S., Israel, and several Eastern European nations. The agreement was conditional upon the advent of "legal peace," which was achieved through the dismissal of the class-action lawsuits. In a novel legal device, statement of interest was filed in the New Jersey and New York Federal Courts by the U.S. government urging for the dismissal of the cases due to the signing of the international agreement.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) represents world Jewry in negotiating for compensation and restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs. The Claims Conference administers compensation funds, recovers unclaimed Jewish property, and allocates funds to institutions that provide social welfare services to Holocaust survivors and preserve the memory and lessons of the Shoah.