A German civil court here today awarded back pay and damages of $2,000 to a Jewish communal leader who during the war had been a slave laborer in a factory set up next to the Auschwitz extermination camp by the huge German IG-Farband chemical combine.
The verdict is certain to be appealed to the Superior Court by IG-Farband and will probably end up on the docket of the German Supreme Court in Karlsruhe. If it is eventually upheld, 1,600 other surviving slave laborers of the IG-Farband factory at Monowitz are expected to recover back pay and damages.
The plaintiff is Norbert Wollheim, a leading figure among the Jews of Germany from 1945 to 1951 and now a resident of New York City. When he and his family were deported to Auschwitz in 1943, his wife and their three year old son were immediately taken to the gas chambers. Since he had undergone a training course as a welder in preparation for his emigration, he himself was taken to Monowitz, an Auschwitz satellite camp, where IG-Farband had built a synthetic rubber plant for the sole purpose of profiting from the slave labor of the camp inmates.
Although he received little food, grossly inadequate medical attention, almost no safety equipment such as welders’ goggles and no pay whatever, Wollheim was one of the few who survived. After the war, he sought to obtain payment from the IG-Farband trust for the work he performed. Although IG-Farband pays full pensions to all its former employees and officers, including those convicted of war crimes, Mr. Wollheim was turned down after protracted negotiations. He then brought suit for $2,000 in a test case which came to trial last October.
Twelve former inmates of Monowitz were heard as witnesses. Among them were three university lecturers and two former British prisoners of war. For the trial IG-Farband retained three lawyers to plead that it could not be held responsible, since the camp inmates were in the custody of the SS and since wages had indeed been paid-to Central SS Headquarters.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
