US court dismisses slave-labor suit against 2 German firms
By MARILYN HENRY

NEW YORK (September 14) - In the first American ruling on German corporations' liability for compensation for victims of the Nazis, a federal court in New Jersey yesterday dismissed the cases against Degussa and Siemens, which were sued for taking victims' gold and for using forced labor.

The court said it was bound to defer to the post-war treaties governing reparations claims.

"Every human instinct yearns to remediate in some way the immeasurable wrongs inflicted upon so many millions of people by Nazi Germany so many years ago, wrongs in which corporate Germany unquestionably participated," US District Judge Dickinson Debevoise said in Newark.

The critical issue, Debevoise said in a 78-page opinion, "is whether in light of post-World War II diplomatic history, the plaintiff victims and representatives of victims of the Nazi regime can bring an action in this court against private German corporations which participated in and profited from the atrocities." His court, Debevoise said, "does not have the power to engage in such remediation."

Manhattan attorney Mel Weiss, who represents Holocaust survivors, said he would appeal the ruling.

"We would have preferred a different decision," Weiss said. However, he added: "This judge has, I think, established a couple of irrefutable truths, and one of them is that the Germans have undertaken to give remedies to these types of victims and they haven't done it. Now it is a question of how you enforce those rights."

Although the ruling pleased German industry, "We don't triumph," said Wolfgang Gibowski, spokesman for the German industrial fund. "We would like to go on with our talks for the [German Remembrance] foundation," Gibowski told The Jerusalem Post, referring to the compensation talks with German industry, the German, US, Israeli, and Central and Eastern European governments, as well as the Claims Conference and survivors' lawyers.

However, he added, "Maybe the talks and the expectations will become more realistic." That appeared to be a reference to the slave- and forced-labor talks last month in Bonn. Those talks, which are to resume in Washington early next month, ended with more than $30 billion separating the two sides. Degussa and Siemens are among the 16 German companies that said they will contribute to the German Remembrance Foundation.

Before yesterday's ruling, survivors' lawyers said privately that a dismissal would dilute the pressure they could put on German industry to compensate forced laborers. Yesterday they said they would seek to use diplomatic and political pressure. The issue may be raised today in Washington, when the House Banking Committee holds hearings on Nazi-era compensation.

German industry, which first proposed a remembrance fund last February, has repeatedly said that the foundation was a humanitarian endeavor that rested in part on getting "legal peace" from Nazi-era claims.

Also expected late yesterday was a ruling from another federal judge in New Jersey, Joseph Greenaway Jr., on whether to dismiss a class-action suit against Ford Motor Company, which seeks compensation for forced labor at Ford's Cologne plant during the war.

Debevoise's decision covers four class-action suits that were brought against the two German corporations. Degussa, a chemical and precious-metals processor, was charged with having refined the gold seized from inmates of concentration camps with knowledge of its source, with use of slave labor, and with having manufactured Zyklon B, which was used in the gas chambers.

Siemens was charged with extensive use of slave laborers.

The ruling does not address the historical facts, but was confined to whether these suits could proceed in American courts.

It also does not directly affect the fate of other class-actions suits in US federal courts against German banks and other German corporations. However, as the first ruling, it is expected to be used as a precedent.

The German government had intervened in the case on the side of Degussa, arguing that under treaties and the rules of the German compensation system, it was for German - not American - courts to rule on claims.

Further, it said that Germany "will oppose any measure applying arbitrary legal doctrine created retroactively and aimed exclusively at the present Germany and its citizens, who were not participants in the crimes of the past."

In a reference to the Claims Conference, the German court papers said: "The cooperation with these organizations meets the moral and financial needs of the victims of the Nazis better than adversary litigation in the courts of the United States." Germany argued that it continues to pay DM 1b. a year to victims of the Nazis living outside of Germany, 80 percent of whom are Jewish.