Germany has resolved a dispute with Holocaust survivors' groups over how to distribute a £4 billion fund to compensate people forced to work as slaves by the Nazis, opening the way for the first payments to be made before the end of the year.
Germany's chief negotiator, Count Otto Lambsdorff, said yesterday that clear guidelines have been agreed on how to share the money, most of which was contributed by German firms who benefitted from the slave labour system, among an estimated one million survivors.
Under the terms of a trust called "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future", which will be established by the summer, those put to work in Nazi slave labour schemes will receive an average of £2,000.
The former, mainly Jewish, slave labourers - whom the Nazis intended to work to death in concentration camps - will receive three times that figure and victims of medical experiments will also receive payments.
Germany has paid more than £40 billion to Hitler's victims since the end of the second World War and some German companies have made individual payments to those they exploited.
However, the impetus for the new fund, which is being supported by such firms as Daimler Chrysler and Allianz, came from a rash of class action lawsuits launched in the US against German companies.
The US government has promised German firms legal protection against such lawsuits once the compensation fund is up and running.
The size of the fund was agreed last December but there have been disagreements since then over who should benefit and how much they should receive. Yesterday's deal earmarks £3.2 billion for slave labour claims, most of which are expected to come from eastern Europe, £400 million for financial damages and £280 million for educational projects.
