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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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