W. Germany Paid $10,8bn. in Reparations Up to End of ’71. Claims Conference Told

West Germany has paid nearly $10.8 billion in reparations to Jewish victims of Nazism up to Dec. 31, 1971, it was disclosed here yesterday at the final session of the current meeting of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. According to a report by Dr. Ernst Katzenstein, German experts estimate that the total reparations payments will amount to $13,1 billion by Dec. 31, 1975 and could reach $20 billion by the year 2000 if annuities still to be paid cut are included.

Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the Claims Conference, said both major West German political parties, the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, were equally determined that the reparations agreement be honored in letter and spirit. He said negotiations were still going on regarding several pending issues. “I hope the reparations era is closed in the way it started: it is in the interests of Germany that it should be so,” Dr. Goldmann said.

(The Israel Documentation Center in Haifa called on Dr. Goldmann last week to take action with German industrial enterprises concerning repayment of indemnification to World War II forced laborers. The Nazi regime had put thousands of Jews and other nationals into forced labor at German plants, Tuvia Friedmann, chairman of the documentation center, said. He said that some 100,000 Israelis who were forced laborers in German plants during the war are entitled to indemnification for their work. Efforts to obtain a sum of money from German manufacturers were made in the past, according to Friedmann, but for the time being nothing has been received.)