Former Nazi-era laborers in Ukraine receive compensation (08/19/01)

Former Nazi-era laborers in Ukraine receive compensation

by Marina Makhnonos
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

KYIV - Former Nazi-era slave laborers in Ukraine began receiving compensation on August 6. The first recipients were 13 victims who accepted their payments in a ceremony held in the Privatbank in Kyiv.

The oldest of the group was 87-year-old Tetiana Moskalenko, who worked in Germany's industrial sector, and the youngest was Lilia Zhur, 60, from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Hundreds of thousands of Nazi victims are eligible for compensation in Ukraine, which lost about a quarter of its population during the Nazi occupation and in battles between German forces and the Red Army. Two million more were sent to concentration camps or became Ostarbeiters (workers from the east), Hitler's main slave labor source.

"Step by step, principles of humanity and respect for people start to dominate in our common European house," Prime Minister Anatolii Kinakh said at the ceremony, according to the Interfax news agency.

Former camp prisoners are to receive $6,800, factory workers $2,000, and farm hands and children $700. Mr. Kinakh added that this is "a minimal compensation" because nothing could compensate for health and moral losses.

"No money can compensate what we had to live through," Polina Shevtsova, a former slave laborer and concentration camp survivor, told the Fakty daily. Ms. Shevtsova was among the first 13 Nazi victims who received compensation.

"I lost relatives, the Fascists crippled my destiny, left me without health ... But from another point of view, we need this money very much: pensions are small and medicines are expensive," Ms. Shevtsova said.

Michael Jansen, the president of a German fund to compensate Nazi-era slave laborers, asked survivors to accept the compensation as Germany's gesture of good will.

"We Germans admit moral and political responsibility for what was done during World War II," Mr. Jansen said.

Currently, about 610,000 Nazi victims live in Ukraine, most of them are now elderly. Some 477,000 of them are currently registered by Ukrainian authorities as eligible for compensation, and the registration process is continuing.

Germany and the nations that suffered under the Nazi regime agreed in 2000 that a fund of 10 million German marks ($4.71 billion U.S.) would be distributed among Nazi victims. Under the agreement, Ukrainian victims are to receive a total of 1.724 billion German marks ($948.2 million).

Representatives of Ukrainian Nazi victims had repeatedly complained that Germany has dragged out the payment process. They claimed 10 percent of former Nazi laborers in Ukraine were dying annually due to old age and ill health.

Germany had refused to start payments until it had gathered all funds and until it was confident that no more claims for property are raised by former victims living in the U.S.

The Ukrainian survivors will receive their compensation payments in two stages, said Ihor Lushnikov, head of the Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation Fund, which was created to distribute the compensation.

First, they are to receive 65 percent of the prescribed sum, which is expected by January 2003, Mr. Lushnikov said. Another stage of payments will be possible after all the former Nazi victims have received the first portion. The payment process is lengthy because Ukrainian and German authorities must carefully examine survivors' claims, he said, according to Interfax.

Ukrainian and German authorities thus far have given final approval to a list of the first 40,000 victims.

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