4460
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• If
Phone:
istorians and lawyers
researching class-action
lawsuits on behalf of for-
mer prisoners of war have
uncovered evidence showing that two
of America's leading automakers col-
laborated with Nazi Germany, the
Washington Post reported on Monday.
The companies deny the charges.
Documents from German and
American archives show that American
managers of Ford Motor Co. and
General Motors Corp. went along
with the conversion of their German
affiliates into military production
plants, even as they were resisting calls
by President Franklin Roosevelt to
increase military production in their
plants at home, the Post said.
Together, the subsidiaries of the
two companies controlled 70 percent
of the German automobile market in
1939, and as World War II began,
they retooled themselves to supply war
materiel to Hitler's army.
A report by a U.S. army investigator
in September 1945 accused the German
branch of Ford of serving as "an arsenal
of Nazism, at least for military vehicles"
with the parent company's "consent."
The report in the Post also noted that
American Ford agreed to a complicated
barter deal that gave Germany increased
access to large quantities of strategic raw
materials, notably rubber.
Both Ford and GM deny they col-
laborated with the Nazis or that they
significantly profited from the use of
forced labor at their German sub-
sidiaries during the war. They main-
tain they bear little responsibility for
the operations of their German sub-
sidiaries, saying they lost contact with
them after the war began
In a statement, GM said the claims
are "slanderous and untrue and do a
great disservice to the thousands of
loyal GM employees and their families
who worked for the U.S.-Allied cause
during World War II."
But documents uncovered by
researchers for Washington attorney
Michael Hausfeld, who earlier this
year filed a class-action suit against
Ford on behalf of a former Russian
prisoner and forced laborer, show that
the parent companies continued to do
business with the Nazi regime and
reaped profits from the German affili-
ates' use of forced labor.
248.683.1010
Assisted
Ford, GM Deny
Nazi Collaboration
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MI 48323
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a°P-4
The conference featured sessions on
the top restitution issues, including
unpaid insurance claims, stolen art,
communal property and gold.
In a speech opening the working
sessions on Tuesday, Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright made the most
direct allusion yet to her Jewish her-
itage, which she learned about shortly
after her appointment in 1996.
"Now as I am 62 years old, I think
of my grandparents; I think about
their faces and the faces of others I see
in the U.S. Holocaust Museum and
Yad Vashem and the Pinchas syna-
gogue in Prague. I think about the
blood in my family's veins.
"Does it matter? It mattered to
Hitler, and that matters to all of us
because that is why 6 million Jews
died."
On the question of stolen Jewish
art, Jewish leaders and State
Department officials pushed for a
broad, nonbinding consensus on how
to approach the controversial issue.
The goal was "to work out general
principles that will require museums
and galleries and auction houses to
research the ownership of art before it
is exchanged and sold, as you would
do with property, so we can protect
the original owners," said •
Undersecretary of State Stuart
Eizenstat. He is the administration's
point man on restitution issues.
At one session, Jonathan Petropolis,
a historian at Baltimore's Loyola
University, estimated that up to
100,000 artworks stolen by the Nazis
could still be missing.
The WJC's Elan Steinberg used the
high-profile conference to press the
government of France to "release the
last prisoners of war — the stolen art-
works."
If France refuses to let the art out
of the country, he said, "it may be an
option to create a 'Museum of
Rescued Art.' There are a number of
restitution options that should be dis-
cussed, but it has to be done in a seri-
ous way.
Delegates also worked to bolster the
international commission dealing with
thousands of unpaid insurance poli-
cies, according to Eizenstat.
Before the opening of the confer-
ence, the White House announced the
appointment of the Presidential
Advisory Commission on Holocaust
Assets in the United States. The panel
will be headed by Edgar Bronfman,
president of the World Jewish
Congress. and will include several
Holocaust survivors and experts.
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Three well planned daily meals
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For information or your private tour
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Detroit Jewish News
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