By Carol J. Williams
TIMES STAFF WRITER

BERLIN, GERMANY-Stepping up the pressure on German industry to compensate aging victims, the American Jewish Committee on Tuesday (12-7-99) released a list of 255 companies still doing business that it said used slave laborers during the Nazi era, but have never acknowledged a responsibility to pay them. The list includes many of Germany's most successful companies, such as the Preussag energy conglomerate and the Agfa film company, as well as the German branches of such major international conglomerates as Shell Oil, Ford Motor Co., and Asea Brown Boveri.

Still, the roster of firms that used prisoners to stay in business and keep Germany's World War II machinery in working order is far from complete, said Deidre Berger, the AJC executive who researched wartime records to compile the list. She estimated that 500 to 600 German firms have yet to make amends to their Nazi-era victims. "We are not releasing this to attack anybody but to help the process change," Eugene DuBow, director of the AJC's Berlin office, said in reference to deadlocked negotiations on compensation for surviving slave laborers. "We hope the publication of this list will prompt more companies to join the planned compensation fund and move negotiations toward a satisfactory settlement. Many of the companies previously unnamed have been hoping the whole matter of slave labor will, as we say in the States, blow over - simply go away," DuBow said. "But it won't until these companies face their historical, moral and ethical responsibilities."

Over the past year, German and U.S. negotiators have moved toward an agreement in fits and starts, in sessions that have alternated between Bonn and Washington, D.C. Lawyers for the surviving victims, thought to number between 700,000 and 2.3 million, have insisted that the German government and companies that used slave laborers commit at least 10 billion marks, or $5.2 billion. The latest combined offer from the Germans was 8 billion marks, or about $4.2 billion.

The two sides, represented by former German Economics Minister Otto Lambsdorff and U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Stuart E. Eizenstat, last met in Bonn three weeks ago and adjourned with neither an agreement nor a date for further talks. Their proclaimed three-week recess for "reflection" expires today (12-08-99), and Berger said the timing of the AJC's disclosure was "not a coincidence." Only 18 German companies have promised to contribute to the compensation fund the Berlin government has proposed establishing to pay lump-sum reparations to those still living of the estimated 12 million Nazi-era slave laborers.

Two dozen other companies, including several on the AJC list, have indicated to German media that they are inclined to join the compensation effort but are reluctant to commit themselves before the fund's total endowment - and thus their share of the obligation - is fixed by negotiators. Lambsdorff warned in an interview with a news agency Tuesday that the collective effort to compensate slave laborers is at risk of collapse. Some of the companies that have already agreed to pay into the fund, including Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank, DaimlerChrysler and Siemens, are anxious to settle claims against their firms to avoid trade sanctions and may bow out of the proposed joint fund to make individual payments, said Lambsdorff. The German government is also concerned that failure to settle the issue soon could damage relations with the United States.

Some of the companies named responded to the list disclosure by saying they have been considering participation in a collective fund, while others professed surprise at the accusations and ignorance of their firms' alleged use of slave labor. Agfa executives were "completely surprised" at their inclusion on the list because Agfa is a subsidiary of Bayer, which is one of the 18 companies already committed to the compensation program, said Harmut Hilden, spokesman for the company headquartered near Cologne.

Ford has been following the negotiations and may contribute to the fund but wants guarantees that it wouldn't be hit with further lawsuits after a collective settlement, said spokesman Paul Schienhofen. Preussag directors have yet to decide their position on the collective settlement effort, said the Hanover company's spokesman, Frank Laurig. "We are still doing research into the company's history, and until that is done, we will not be deciding on participation," Laurig said.

Many of the named companies contacted by the Los Angeles Times refused to comment on the allegations that they used slave labor, including the Shell Oil giant, cigarette maker Reemstmsa, the MAN machine-building enterprise, Carl Zeiss, Inc. optical works and Miele appliances.

SOURCE: Excerpted from the 8 December, 1999, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, from an article entitled, "Group's List Alleges Slave Labor Use." Christian Retzlaff of the LA Times' Berlin Bureau and Reane Oppl of the Bonn office contributed to this report. Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.