About 130,000 Nazi victims in Russia deprived of compensations

About 130,000 Russian victims of Nazism have been deprived of compensations from Germany for slave and coercive labour during the "Third Reich" period, officials at the Russian Union of Former Minor Inmates of Fascist Concentration Camps said.

People had been taken to concentration camps and prisons for slave labour in the occupied territories of the former Soviet Union by force. "However the places where they were held were not included in the list of camps by international classification and the list of camps approved for compensations by the German side," officials at Russia's Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation Foundation, which is responsible for compensations, told Itar-Tass.

In addition, "in the course of negotiations that preceded the international programme of compensations, people who had not been deported to the 'Third Reich' territory were not taken into account," they added.

The officials said that the first stage of German payments to Russian Nazi victims had just ended. The second, final, stage will begin in September. A total of 260,000 former inmates of concentration camps and slave labourers or their heirs will get compensations.

"Tens of thousands of Russians disagree with the distribution of German compensations," a representative of the Russian Union of Former Minor Inmates of Fascist Concentration Camps said.

In his words, letters proposing to change German legislation regulating questions of compensations and allocate additional funds for compensations keep on coming from people in the Kaluga, Voronezh, Moscow, Oryol, Smolensk, Bryansk and Krasnodar regions.

"All in all, about 80,000 people have signed them," the official said.

"The Nazi held slaves on the occupied territories of the former Soviet Union in inhuman conditions and used them for work that was as harmful and dangerous as that done by the deported to Germany," the official said.

Former concentration camp inmates believe that "such an approach towards the payment of compensations is unjustified from the historical, legal and moral point of view."

Source: Itar-Tass