IG Farben in the News

[Richard Romeo]

Filed at 4:52 p.m. EDT

          By The Associated Press

          FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- IG Farben, the German chemical
          company that made poison gas for Nazi death camps, will set up a
          compensation fund for Nazi-era slave laborers within weeks, an 
official in
          charge of liquidating the once-great firm said Wednesday.

          Once the world's largest chemical company, IG Farben was broken up 
in
          1952 by the Allies, who ordered the company into liquidation. It 
remains
          largely as a trust to settle claims and lawsuits from the Nazi 
era. Dozens
          are still pending in German courts.

          Volker Pollehn, the official in charge of dissolving IG Farben, 
said the fund
          would be started with an initial $228,000 in the coming weeks. The
          government has criticized IG Farben's decision not to participate 
in the $4.5
          billion government-business fund to compensate those forced to 
work for
          Nazi firms and in slave labor camps.

          IG Farben had an estimated 83,000 slave workers by 1944 at the
          Auschwitz complex in what is now Poland. Its subsidiary Degesch
          produced Zyklon B for Adolf Hitler's gas chambers.

          Pollehn reiterated at the company's annual meeting in Frankfurt 
that the
          holding company would not join in the government-business fund 
because
          of legalities due to the liquidation. A spokesman for the
          government-business fund said it would cost IG Farben money and 
time to
          set up duplicate administrative structures to pay two funds.

          A leading lawmaker from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social
          Democrats, Dieter Wiefelspuetz, called IG Farben's decision 
``almost an
          affront'' and said not enough money was being put forward.

          ``The entire proceedings is really embarrassing,'' he told 
Handelsblatt
          newspaper. ``It's really regrettable if a company thinks it can 
get away in
          this manner.''

          Pollehn said the IG Farben of today accepts responsibility for its 
past.

          The company once provided great services in the chemical and
          pharmaceutical branches, he said, but ``was in a horrible manner 
jointly
          guilty in the enslavement, degradation and extermination of 
innocent people
          during the time of the Nazis.''

          In the 1950s, IG Farben paid $16.4 million in compensation to 
Holocaust
          survivors,

          The company set the compensation fund a year ago at an estimated 
$1.36
          million -- an amount then criticized by survivors and human rights 
groups
          who demanded much more. At the time trustees of the former
          conglomerate said the fund would be established by the end of 
1999.
          Pollehn has blamed lawsuits and technicalities for slowing the 
process.





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