(13 May 1999) English/Nat
Representatives of the U-S, Germany and six other countries met in Washington to discuss efforts to obtain reparations for hundreds of thousands of slave labourers who worked for the Nazis.
Many were employed by large German companies, 15 of which have pledged to set up a fund by September to pay the reparations.
The German car maker Volkswagen faces a class action lawsuit charging it is responsible for hundreds of children dying in a Nazi nursery it ran.
The lawsuit alleges that up to 400 Russian and Polish children born to slave laborers forced to work at Volkswagen died as a result of maltreatment and inhumane conditions.
Photos show the exhumed remains of infants, some buried three or more to a box in a German cemetery.
Born to Russian and Polish slave labourers forced to work at Volkswagen during World War II, children were taken away from their mothers usually only days after birth.
They were then sent to a company nursery.
At the "Kinderheim" they were starved and ignored until they died.
More than 50 years later, people are demanding that companies take responsibility for their war-time actions.
Michael Hausfeld is the lead attorney in a class-action lawsuit against the German-based automobile manufacturer, Volkswagen.
It seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for the deaths of up to 400 Russian and Polish children who died between 1943 and 1945.
The lawsuit says Volkswagen's actions constitute "genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity".
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"At one point the mortality rate at the Volkswagen Kinderheim in Wolfsburg had 100 percent mortality. Every child that was there died. And you have to understand a little bit of how they died. It wasn't quickly. It was slowly. They were allowed to choke on their vomit, lay in their excrement, be infested by bugs, vermin, disease. Their bodies were bloated and they were discoloured. They would cry sometimes for 24 hours a day. No one took care of them. These children, by design, were literally neglected to death."
SUPER CAPTION: Michael Hausfeld, Plaintiff's Attorney
The Wolfsburg factory produced munitions for the German war effort, as well as Adolph Hitler's "people's car", the Volkswagen Beetle.
Volkswagen actively solicited the use of forced labour supplied by the Nazi regime.
Lawyers say the lawsuit is based on information from war-crimes investigations and trial records.
Their evidence contains a letter Hitler wrote endorsing the head of Volkswagen's proposal to use forced labour.
Only one slave labourer, 78-year old Anna Snopczyk of Poland, is listed in the lawsuit.
Snopczyk, who worked at the Wolfsburg plant and later a farm, met another labourer and fell in love.
She became pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy named Josef in February of 1945.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"The child was taken from Anna. Anna got to visit the child once or twice. Both times she brought disinfectant and literally just poured it on the floor to try to keep the bugs from crawling up to the infant. The infant dies within six months."
SUPER CAPTION: Michael Hausfeld, Plaintiff's Attorney
No one informed Snopczyk why her son died.
Snopczyk also had to pay for her child's burial, according to the lawsuit.
At the end of the war, the German government ordered the papers documenting the deaths at the Volkswagen nursery destroyed.
But Hausfeld says a health official, troubled by the atrocities, burned thousands of pages of blank paper instead.
Decades later, they surfaced when documents were reclassified.
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