wfn.org | German church confesses it used forced laborers during war

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Note #6134 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

27-July-2000
00271

German church confesses it used forced laborers during war

Protestant church contributes $4.7 million to compensation fund

by Frauke Brauns
Ecumenical News International

BIELEFELD, Germany -- The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Germany's
main Protestant body, and the main Protestant social-service organization
are to contribute 10
million Deutschmarks (U.S.$4.7 million) to a compensation fund launched July
20 for forced laborers brought to Germany during the Nazi era.
	In a statement announcing their decision the EKD and Diakonisches Werk
admitted that forced laborers had been used in church parishes and diaconal
institutions, such as church-run
hospitals.
	The compensation fund has been set up by the German government and
businesses after 18 months of negotiations and threats of American lawsuits
by victims. About 1.5 million surviving victims will receive between 5000
and 15000 Deutschmarks each from the fund. Dependants will receive nothing.
	The Roman Catholic Church in Germany has declined to contribute to the
fund, and has stated that there is no evidence that forced laborers were
used in Catholic institutions. However, a German television station is about
to broadcast allegations that forced laborers from Poland and Ukraine were
sent to work at a Catholic monastery and a theological seminary, and that
prisoners from a concentration camp were forced to work in a church
institution.
	The Nazi regime is believed to have used up to 10 million civilian
foreigners and prisoners of war as laborers, many of whom died in appalling
conditions. The first forced laborers were brought from Poland soon after
the outbreak of the war in 1939. From 1942, forced laborers were shipped in
from German-occupied parts of western and eastern Europe, and forced to work
in farming, factories and public institutions.
	In a joint statement issued July 12, Manfred Kock, the EKD council
president, and Jurgen Gohde, president of Diakonsiches Werk, said: "Forced
labourers were used in the Protestant church and its diaconal institutions ?
We accept this guilt."
	In one case that has recently come to light, 26 Protestant and two Catholic
parishes in Berlin built a work camp in 1943 for at least 100 forced
laborers. According to a press release issued by the Evangelical Church in
Berlin-Brandenburg, records show that the forced laborers lived and worked
in horrific conditions. The names of 47 of the laborers are known.
	"It is sad that parishes systematically used forced laborers to deal with
the need for workers caused by the war," Wolfgang Huber, the bishop of
Berlin-Brandenburg, told the German Protestant news agency EPD last week.
"The church became entangled with the Nazi regime."
	According to Michael Hausler, a historian working in the archives and
library of the Diakonisches Werk agency of the EKD in Berlin, "We do not yet
know how may forced laborers worked in German parishes and diaconal
institutions."
	He told ENI that the EKD began only last December to investigate whether
forced laborers had worked in Protestant parishes and church institutions.
	"We undertook a survey [of parishes and diaconal institutions], but we did
not get much useful information," he said, pointing out that Protestant
parishes and institutions had not kept many records about the use of forced
labor. Historians would have to turn instead to town and regional archives,
he said.
	Diakonisches Werk has asked an historian, Harald Jenner, from Hamburg, to
investigate the use of forced labor, looking first at the regional churches
of North Elbia and Hamburg, in northern Germany. He is expected to publish
the results of his research at the end of this month.
	According to municipal records, the Gustav-Werner-Stiftung, a church
foundation in Reutlingen, in southern Germany, which now runs homes for the
elderly, employed 80 forced laborers. The biggest Bavarian diaconal
institution of Neuendettelsau, which ran hospitals during the war, has
records showing that forced laborers worked on its farms, although not how
many. Apparently17 forced labourers worked for the Church of the Palatinate
from 1943 to 1944.
	The EKD has also appealed to German industry to contribute generously to
the compensation fund. The German state and German industry are each
supposed to contribute five million Deutschmarks to the compensation fund,
but reluctance by many German firms to contribute to the fund means there is
a shortfall of about 2 million Deutschmarks.
	Klaus-Dieter Kaiser, the EKD official dealing with the laborers issue, told
ENI that as the number of forced laborers in church institutions was not
known, the EKD's contribution to the fund "does not take into account how
many forced laborers" were involved. He stressed that the church donations
to the fund were given voluntarily.
	The contribution was intended to acknowledge "our responsibility as part of
society," Kaiser said. "We want not merely plead with German business
leaders [to donate] but also to demonstrate that we accept responsibility
and are paying up."
	Kaiser would not speculate on why the Protestant Church had used forced
labor. "No documents have been found that explain this," he told ENI.
	But according to Hausler, it is possible that the church and many Germans
did not believe the system of foreign workers was wrong, thinking that it
was a normal part of day-to-day life during the war, helping to overcome the
labor shortage -- a belief that persisted until the 1990s.
	"It is as simple as that: diaconal institutions needed their help [of
forced laborers] to continue caring for others," he said.
	He pointed out that during the war workers could be taken on only through
employment offices, which distributed forced laborers both to German
industry and to the church and diaconal institutions. Among other things,
forced laborers worked at cemeteries, in farming and in hospital kitchens.
	The German Catholic Bishops' Conference (DBK) has said that it does is not
intend to contribute to the compensation fund. Rudolf Hammerschmidt, the
DBK's spokesperson, originally said that there were no indications that
Catholic institutions had employed forced laborers.
	However, the television program Monitor is apparently about to broadcast
allegations that forced laborers from Ukraine and Poland were sent to the
Catholic monastery of Ettal in Bavaria and to the theological seminary in
Paderborn, and that prisoners from a concentration camp were forced to work
at a Catholic institution.
	Asked about these allegations, Hammerschmidt told ENI: "If it is true that
forced laborers worked for our church, the church will face up to this."
	He said that the DBK was setting up an investigation to look into the
allegations, the results of which were likely to be considered at the annual
meeting of the German bishops next
January.

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