Talks Fail to Settle Holocaust Claims

U.S. and German officials failed Monday to reach an agreement on a proposed $5-billion settlement on Holocaust-related legal claims, imperiling the chances of an agreement in time for a presidential visit to Germany next week.

Representatives of the two sides said progress had been made in negotiations Monday but further talks were needed on the key issue of how much protection German companies would obtain from legal actions in the United States.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart E. Eizenstat, the Clinton administration’s point man on Holocaust issues, issued a statement saying that he and Otto Graf Lambsdorff, Germany’s special Holocaust envoy, had agreed to meet again in Berlin on May 31, a day before President Clinton arrives for an official visit. The two sides had hoped that Clinton and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder could hold a formal ceremony signing the settlement when Clinton is in Germany, but sources said that is now unlikely.

Eizenstat’s statement said that he and Lambsdorff agreed that the proposed settlement “shall not affect” any of the treaties that were signed between the United States and Germany after World War II. In recent days, German leaders had raised concerns that the United States hoped to secure more reparations from the German government in these talks. But on Monday, Eizenstat declared that the United States “will not raise any reparations claims against Germany.”

The proposed agreement would settle several major lawsuits against German companies contending that Holocaust survivors are entitled to damages for slave labor, forced labor, looted assets or heinous medical experiments that were performed on people in German concentration camps. Survivor advocates in the United States have expressed particular concern that the agreement may not adequately address the claims of those subjected to the medical experiments.

Half of the $5-billion settlement--the vast bulk of which is supposed to be paid out to 240,000 slave laborers, mainly Jewish, and about 1.5 million forced laborers, mostly eastern Europeans--would be funded by the German government and the other half by German corporations.