The German media company Bertelsmann has agreed to join a
$5billion compensation fund for Nazi-era concentration camp victims and
slave labourers.
Although 65 German companies, including
Siemens, Volkswagen and DaimlerChrysler, agreed to set up the fund
jointly with the German government in December and 620 have now pledged
to pay some compensation, Bertelsmann until recently claimed it had not
worked with the Nazis.
However, the company says new
research has found that it was involved in producing some anti-Semitic
literature for the German army during the period.
Bertelsmann, the world’s largest publisher of English language books,
has not yet said how much it intends to contribute to the compensation
fund.
German businesses are expected to put $2.5bn into the package. Less than half of this sum has so far been pledged.
The issue of accounts held by holocaust victims is posing a
reputational challenge to a bank in Israel. Bank Leumi recently posted
a list of 13,000 dormant accounts on the internet, some of which date
back to the Holocaust.
