from germany Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ) This month marks 25 years since compensation was paid to the last survivors forced to work under the Nazi regime.
But some argue that these payments should have started long before the end of World War II in 1945, and should have been much larger. According to EVZ, between 2001 and 2007, when the last payments were made, €4.4 billion ($5.1 billion) was paid to 1.66 million former forced laborers and their legal heirs in approximately 100 countries.
It is believed that approximately 26 million people were forced to work for the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945, about half of them in occupied Europe outside Germany’s borders during World War II. Historical studies have shown that if the full amount of slave labor committed during the Nazi era were to be compensated, the original fund would have to consist of between 180 billion and 220 billion Deutschmarks (€90 billion – €112 billion).
“If you ask me personally: Was it a big fund? No, not at all, measured against injustice,” said EVZ head Andrea Despot. “There were about 26 million people who worked in factories, in agriculture, in churches, in private homes, in companies. There was hardly a section of society that did not benefit from it. One could say that the losses and exploitation caused by it were not compensated.”
EVZ was founded in July 2000, both as a foundation to provide compensation to forced laborers and to promote and finance projects promoting human rights, democratic values, and the interests of survivors of the Nazi regime. The organization was funded with 10.1 billion Deutschmarks, half of which was paid by the federal government, and the other half by an organization of approximately 6,500 German companies called the German Business Foundation Initiative, many of which, though not all, were businesses that used forced labor.
Nazi-era slaves given ‘symbolic’ compensation
Although West Germany introduced compensation measures such as the 1953 “Federal Compensation Act” for those persecuted for political, racial, or religious reasons, those efforts did not include forced laborers. From the 1950s to the 1980s, following public pressure, some large West German companies voluntarily paid millions of Germans in compensation to forced laborers, though not to those in Eastern Europe.
The debate was tough in the 1990s, with many German companies initially refusing to contribute to the fund and refusing to take responsibility for forced labour. “In the end, it was basically just numerical symbolism,” said Constantin Goschler, a historian at Ruhr University Bochum, who in 2012 published a comprehensive collection of studies on compensation for Nazi-era forced laborers.
“People representing claimants were saying: We need at least a two-digit number [of billions] And the people who were paying were saying: We want a number that is in the maximum two digits,” he said. “And that’s how 10 billion DM came out in the end. It had nothing to do with the size of the damage, it was pure negotiation psychology.”
Class action suits, especially from Jewish groups
Legal pressure also played an important role, as more and more victim groups, especially in the US, began to discover the power of class-action lawsuits. “It was not a completely moral or ethical decision – it was part of it, but not the only one,” Despot told DW. “After decades of demands from survivors, there was international pressure, particularly from the United States and also from Jewish organizations, which were preparing class action lawsuits.”
These threats eventually led Germany to enter negotiations with the US to establish legal clarity for the future.
Why did compensation take so long?
Goschler said there was a broader reason why it took more than half a century for the German state to compensate former forced labourers. “The first reason was the Cold War,” he told DW. “During the Cold War, one principle was in effect: We do not send any money behind the Iron Curtain.” This meant that West Germany refused to send any money to its eastern neighbors, especially Poland.
Another factor, Goschler said, was that former forced laborers in Eastern Europe were often treated with suspicion, and so there were few people on their side at home. “The forced laborers – and many of them were women – were considered collaborators in the former Soviet Union who worked for the Nazi war economy, and when they returned home after the war, they were disbelieved, sent to screening and filtration camps, they lived very miserable lives,” he said.
In fact, Goschler argued, when Germany eventually compensated them, the survivors were less concerned about the money than about correcting the historical record. He said, “More important than the little money they received from Germany was the certificate confirming that they were victims, not traitors.”
Protecting human rights and democracy
there are still peopley Former forced laborers still alive: The Jewish Dawa Conference Stated that there are still approximately 200,000 Jews surviving worldwide, as well as several million surviving Eastern Europeans, Roma and Sinti, and former political prisoners who were forced to work by the Nazis – exact numbers for those latter groups have never been established.
Although compensation claims have long been paid, EVZ’s work continues to this day. EVZ is now a charitable foundation that funds projects promoting human rights, democratic values, historical and political education.
According to Despot, the main purpose of the EVZ today is to preserve the cultural memory of Germany’s Nazi period, especially the forced labor schemes that benefited thousands of German companies.
In 2025, EVZ was declared an “undesirable organization” by the Kremlin after showing support towards Ukraine. Despot said, “Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were all deeply wounded by the genocidal and exploitative German occupation.” “We saw those countries as partners in our work. Today the Russian war against Ukraine is also an attack on Ukrainian identity and Ukrainian history.”
Now, EVZ helps Russian and Belarusian organizations that have been exiled by their respective governments.
Edited by Reena Goldenberg