Bundesverband Informations-
und Beratungsstelle für NS-Verfolgte
Amerikanische und englische
Agenturen zur Ford-Klage
REUTERS
By Chris Michaud
NEW YORK, March 4 (Reuters) - A Russian woman who was abducted by the Nazis as
a teenager and forced to work at a plant run by Ford's German subsidiary is
suing the automotive giant, claiming the company knowingly profited from use
of forced labor in Germany during the Second World War.
The woman, Elsa Iwanowa, who now lives in Antwerp,
Belgium, was able to bring the action because of a change in German law late
last year which for the first time permits forced laborers to file individual
claims against corporations.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Newark, New
Jersey, on Wednesday alleges that Ford Motor Co., as the owner of a
substantial majority of the shares of its German subsidiary Ford Werke A.G.,
was "unjustly enriched by knowingly accepting substantial economic benefits"
using forced labor. The suit seeks a share of profits accrued by the company
from use of forced labor in Germany during the war, as well as pay never
received for work and compensatory and punitive damages with interest, and
court and attorneys fees.
Ford issued a statement saying "the plant was under Nazi
control during the war and not returned to Ford control until after the war by
Allied military authorities." But the company said it was reinstituting an
active, deep search of Ford archives in the United States and Germany "to see
if there are additional facts available ... When we receive the results of
this effort, we will proceed from there."
According to the complaint, Iwanowa, who brought the
suit on her own behalf as well as "on behalf of all ... persons who were
compelled to perform forced labor for Ford Werke A.G. between 1941-1945," was
abducted by the Nazis from her home in Rostov, Russia, on Oct. 6, 1942. The
teen-ager was literally purchased by Ford Werke, the suit said, along with 38
other children, and sent to work at its Cologne plant, where she drilled holes
into the motor blocks of engines for military trucks. The laborers lived in a
wooden hut without heat, running water or sewage facilities and were never
paid, the suit said.
"This action ... will seek final justice for hundreds of
thousands of victims enslaved or forced to work for the benefit of the German
war effort during the Second World War," said Melvyn Weiss of the New York
firm Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP and lead attorney for the
plaintiffs.
According to the complaint, by 1941 Ford Werke was
devoting itself to military trucks. At that time 75 percent of its shares were
owned by Ford Motor Co., with additional shares owned by Ford subsidiaries.
The Nazis never confiscated Ford Werke, unlike most U.S.-owned companies,
regarding the company as "a purely German company" with a CEO, Robert Schmidt,
who was a Nazi and served as Germany's Military Economic Leader during the
war. The Nazis "meticulously safeguarded wartime dividends payable from Ford
Werke A.G. to Ford Motor Company ... by paying them into a fund for delivery
to Ford Motor Company at the close of the war," the suit alleged.
After 1947 Ford Motor Co. took "substantial profits and
benefits" from Ford Werke. Through use of forced labor, the suit said, Ford
Werke's already high profitability doubled between 1939 and 1943. The
complaint also said the Nazis' favorable treatment of Ford Motor Co. was
attributable to a "personal friendship between Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler,"
noting the two exchanged birthday gifts and Ford's publication of the
anti-Semitic tract "The International Jew, a Worldwide Problem."
During the war over 7.5 million people were forcibly
deported from occupied territory to Germany to support its war effort, and
subjected to "all the tortures, indignities and suffering that the human mind
can encompass," the suit said.
French prisoners of war were used by Ford Werke
beginning in 1941, in violation of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, with
Russians, Ukrainians, Italians and Belgian civilians eventually laboring at
Ford's Cologne plant, the suit said.
REUTERS
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