Germany's Catholic Church is over the next few days to begin compensating forced laborers it employed under the Nazis, head bishop Karl Lehmann said Tuesday.
The church initiative is independent of the 10 billion mark (five billion euro/4.4 billion dollar) foundation being set up by German government and industry to compensate Nazis slave and forced laborers.
The church is participating in this larger foundation but has on its own set aside five million marks for compensation and another five million marks for programs favoring reconciliation through research into the Nazi past.
Lehmann said the church would be giving 5,000 marks (2,556 euros/2,198 dollars) to the forced laborers it used.
The first to be paid would be a man in Silesia, in Poland, who worked on the farm of a priest during the second world war, and a woman living in Germany who worked in a Catholic hospital in the west of the country.
The Church estimates that it used 10,000 forced laborers and that about 1,000 are still alive. People have until December 31, 2002 to make claims.
Only 50 have so far presented themselves to the Caritas organization which is handling the claims -- MAINZ (AFP)
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