- Reparations Watch

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, which specializes in Holocaust reparations issues, announced Monday that it will distribute $401 million this week to 130,681 Nazi slave laborers -- including more than 4,300 in California -- from 62 countries around the world. The organization has distributed a total of $1.3 billion to former slave and forced laborers, said Gideon Taylor, the executive vice president of the conference in New York. The bulk of the money came from a fund created in 2000 by the German government and financed by major German corporations. About $200 million came from a settlement Jewish organizations reached with Swiss banks in 1998. [more]