Kolodziejek worked first at Auschwitz, carting rubber solvents for I.G. Farben’s war effort, then at Mauthausen, building Messerschmitt planes. He spent the entire war in the camps. His untold experience is a reminder of the secret behind the thousand-year Reich’s 12-year reign. Nazi Europe was a kind of pyramid scheme: conquer a country, then enslave its able-bodied citizens to empower the machine to conquer more. And under fascism the corporations that built this empire thrived on low overhead, thanks to millions of slave laborers like Kolodziejek.
Until now, most of these companies had slipped by history’s notice. When the war ended the United States saw a healthy German economy as a bulwark against communism. Only three companies were prosecuted at Nuremberg; they and a few others paid a pittance in compensation. But in recent months, inspired by the $1.25 billion the Swiss banks paid last year to settle wartime claims, lawyers have filed more than two dozen class-action lawsuits alleging that manufacturers, construction firms, banks and insurance companies in Europe, Britain and the United States profited from the Holocaust. Germany, of course, is hardest hit: marquee names like Daimler-Benz, Siemens and Volkswagen, and dozens of other German firms, allegedly competed to enslave hundreds of thousands of Poles, Czechs, Russians and Ukrainians to build camps, armaments and plants. Last week a top aide to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder met with survivors’ groups and U.S. officials to try to fashion a universal settlement covering German companies that lawyers expect will exceed $10 billion.
The newest lawsuits, for the first time, make allegations about Nazi war crimes a largely Gentile affair. Like Kolodziejek, about nine out of 10 surviving forced or slave laborers are not Jewish, and yet ““the only groups that have ever been researched are Jewish slave laborers,’’ says Miriam Kleiman, a researcher for Washington attorney Michael Hausfield, one of several lawyers who filed the Polish-laborer suit on behalf of Kolodziejek and others. While only about 20,000 to 30,000 concentration-camp survivors are estimated to be alive in Poland, an estimated 500,000 former slave laborers are still living.
This is, perhaps, the most gripping part of Kolodziejek’s story: few have ever paid attention to it. He has never received reparations from Germany. (The West German government did make lump-sum payments to Poland and other eastern countries after the war, but under communist rule few workers received them; Bonn also used the cold war as a legal excuse to block other compensation.) He does not have the communal sense of survivorhood to cling to, like the Jews. His daughter, Patricia, bitterly recalls her father’s getting snubbed by Jewish claims groups when they found he was Catholic. ““I meet survivors on the street,’’ says Kolodziejek, a handyman who lives in a row house on $609 a month in Social Security. ““I say I was at Auschwitz. But they just look at me’’–suspicious of the mere fact that he survived when most Jews at Auschwitz had a much shorter life span. On this point Kolodziejek stops laughing. ““I suffered just as much as them,’’ he says angrily. ““I suffered more than many.''
The latest lawsuits are part of a spreading stain of liability. In Australia, former POWs and civil internees are considering a similar suit against the Japanese over slave labor. Martin Mendelsohn, a U.S. lawyer, tells NEWSWEEK he is discussing a lawsuit with Moscow on behalf of Russians forced into labor by Germany. (Bonn has threatened to raise the question of compensation for 700,000 German soldiers who were conscripted into forced labor in the Soviet Union after the war. Only about half survived.) ““Virtually every country east of the Elbe has a potential claim,’’ says Washington lawyer Mendelsohn. In addition, half a dozen U.S. companies whose German subsidiaries operated and reported back to the United States (often through branches in Vichy France), including most notably GM and Ford, are being investigated by lawyers. So are the same number of British companies. America’s Chrysler, recently absorbed by Daimler and generally considered blameless during the war, now finds itself named in the Polish suit. French banks, along with U.S. banks Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan, are being sued separately for improperly seizing Jewish assets. There is another case against 25 insurance companies across Europe.
All this is a lesson in how the 20th century’s darkest horror still haunts the 21st century’s greatest hope: global integration. As the global Swiss banks discovered last year, when they start operating big time in America they can be sued in U.S. courts. Not surprisingly, the key figure behind the push for a German corporate settlement is Deutsche Bank chairman Rolf Breuer, who wants to buy America’s Bankers Trust. Like the Swiss, Breuer quickly found himself facing a threatened boycott in the United States–and possible regulatory obstacles to his merger plans–if he didn’t deal. ““Only if the banks make moral, historical and financial restitution is it possible for us to move to the next stage of development of the global economy,’’ warns Alan Hevesi, the New York comptroller who heads a nationwide network of 900 state and city financial officers controlling hundreds of billions in pension funds–which buys the stocks of global banks like Deutsche, and which the bank wants to manage.
To its credit, Deutsche Bank had been trying to come clean on its wartime record before the current controversy. It commissioned outside historians to comb through its massive records. ““In a sense, they’re disappointed if we don’t come up with something nasty about them,’’ says Berkeley historian Gerald Feldman. ““They don’t want someone else finding something we missed.’’ They haven’t been disappointed: two weeks ago the historians found records proving that the bank financed the building of Auschwitz. In a rare admission that average Germans actively participated in the Holocaust, the bank said its branch manager and others knew what their loans were for. ““For many years there was this myth that existed, that it was the Nazis’ horrible regime that dragooned the German people into [the Holocaust],’’ says Daniel Goldhagen, author of ““Hitler’s Willing Executioners.’’ ““In the last few years people have opened their eyes and said a lot of Germans were making decisions on their own whether to do good or evil.''
The German government, mindful of the public-relations disaster that hit the stubborn Swiss, is anxious to settle and set up a fund by Sept. 1, the 60th anniversary of the invasion of Poland. ““German companies are ready to compensate,’’ SchrOder said in Washington last week after meeting President Clinton. ““We are very interested in finding a comprehensive solution that provides a high degree of legal certainty.’’ Translation: we’ll pay, but no more lawsuits.
In fact, the biggest fight here may be among the claimants, with the class-action lawyers on one side and the World Jewish Congress and its sister agency the World Jewish Restitution Organization, on the other. As in the Swiss case, the lawyers are fighting for direct restitution to survivors (and, their critics say, for fees) through the courts. They also argue that the latest claims are no longer a Jewish issue. But the WJC has a powerful weapon on its side: Hevesi, who takes his cue from WJC president Edgar Bronfman. ““The WJC is trying to seize the limelight. It has acted in a manner so counterproductive to a full and fair resolution to what we’re trying to do,’’ snipes one lawyer, who complains that only class-action suits against individual companies will force them to account for their wartime history.
The lawyers, and some survivors, also bitterly accuse the WJC and the postwar Jewish-claims conference of being painfully slow in paying out money. ““We would like the money to be paid directly to the survivors,’’ says Rudy Kennedy, who worked as a slave under Volkswagen (and Werner von Braun, a Nazi who later worked for NASA) at its V1 plant at Dora. ““These big organizations tend to have tremendous bureaucracy. The money is not distributed. It’s outrageous.’’ WJC spokesman Elan Steinberg says, in turn, that he is outraged that the lawyers are taking fees after acting pro bono in the Swiss case (in fact, a group of them are now claiming up to $25 million in fees in that matter). ““We find that unacceptable,’’ says Steinberg. ““No one should be making a profit from the Holocaust. If they can’t afford this case, they shouldn’t have taken it.’’ Robert Swift, one of the class-action lawyers, says: ““If you want to attract world-class lawyers to get a world-class result, you should expect to pay them. None of the class-action claimants have a problem with that.''
Bonn, meanwhile, is pressuring Washington to bring the lawyers in line. SchrOder’s aide, Bodo Hombach, would not meet with the lawyers last week, and Deutsche Bank’s Breuer, using words of questionable taste, accused various ““interest groups’’ of brandishing ““torture instruments.’’ ““I think he thinks we’ll pick his pocket or mug him in the men’s room,’’ smirks Burt Neuborne, a New York law professor who is helping in the case.
The U.S. State Department is, for the most part, trying to weave a course between the parties. On one hand it fended off a German request to call off the American lawyers, saying it had no legal right to do so. But it has also taken Germany’s side, asking last week that there be no bank boycott. ““Germany is one of our key partners and friends around the world,’’ explains a senior administration official. Stuart Eizenstat, the under secretary of State for economic affairs, says Washington is acting as a ““facilitator’’ in trying to ““provide closure.’’ Expectations are that there will be a settlement involving all the parties within the next few months. So Waclaw Kolodziejek will probably get some money. Whether he–or, for that matter, Germany–will then be able to forget the horror of those years is another matter.
BLUE CHIPS, WITH A STAIN Many of Germany’s top companies helped the Nazi cause and have admitted their role. Some of the better known:
Deutsche Bank Handled property confiscated from Jews; helped finance the death camp at Auschwitz.
Volkswagen Employed 25,000 slave laborers–up to 70% of its work force–for arms production, including the V1 rocket.
Degussa Smelted gold looted from Holocaust victims; helped produce Zyklong B, the gas used in the chambers at Auschwitz. Last year American Holocaust survivors sued for the company’s entire net worth.
Siemens Employed more than 50,000 slave laborers, mostly for arms production.
BMW Employed slave labor to assemble aircraft engines.
