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The Federal Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" (Stiftung EVZ) was endowed by the "Foundation Initiative of the German Economy" and the Federal Government. The law on the establishment of the foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" became effective on 12 August 2000 with the aim to provide individual humanitarian benefits to former NS forced labourers and a few other groups of victims of National Socialism channeled through international partner organisations. Total foundation funds amounted to 10.1 billion Deutschmarks. This amount is made up of voluntary payments of approximately 6,500 German enterprises (5.1 billion Deutschmarks) and the contribution of the Federal Government in the amount of 5 billion Deutschmarks.
Just under 8.7 billion Deutschmarks (4.45 billion Euro) were paid to former forced labourers in the form of individual one-time-payments until the foundation was closed.
To be eligible for payments as a former forced labourer, the person concerned was required to have been held prisoner in a concentration camp, ghetto or a similar place of detention associated with forced labour (so-called category A) or be abducted from his or her home country into the German Reich or in a territory occupied by German forces and was subjected to forced labour under conditions of detention, conditions similar to detention or any comparable extremely bad living conditions. (category B).
The amount of payments was a lump sum based on the two categories A and B and another category C, which allowed exceptional payments to victims with other characteristics of distress, mostly for forced labourers who had been involved in farm labour. According to this, those eligible for benefits of category A received up to 15,000 Deutschmarks (7,670 Euro) and those of the categories B and C up to 5,000 Deutschmarks (2,560 Euro).
The persons affected or their legal successors had to file their application until 31 December 2001 while they were allowed to produce evidence lateron. All application procedures had to be closed until 30 September 2006.
Payments were made to 1,665,000 victims and their legal successors to compensate for forced labour funded by the target ceiling. These payments covered the major part of the total amount available of 5.58 billion Euro with a total volume of 4.529 billion Euro.
Furthermore, payments were granted for:
Ceilings for the tasks of the foundation
Source: "Gemeinsame Verantwortung und moralische Pflicht". Published by Michael Jansen and Günter Saathoff. Göttingen, 2007. P. 213
By the end of the year 2006 the financial compensation scheme of the foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" was closed. With some remaining funds some additional social and medical projects could be initiated in favour of former forced labourers in Eastern European states.
In line with the payments of the foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" the term "compensation" was always avoided; this was not due to claiming a certain legal status but rather due to the fact that in view of the horrendous violence and harm suffered the one-time payment, which was nevertheless rather low for the individual, was by no means intended to indicate a true "compensation". It was simply meant to represent a symbolic material gesture and the public recognition of the tragedy of those who had been victims of the National Socialism. Bearing this in mind, the compensation programme was officially closed in a ceremony by Federal President Horst Köhler at Bellevue Castle in the presence of German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel on 12th June 2007.