Germany plans compensation for Jewish ghetto workers

BERLIN, Feb 4 (Reuters) The German government plans to pay compensation to Holocaust survivors who worked in Jewish ghettos set up by the Nazis, a magazine reported.

Weekly magazine Der Spiegel said yesterday the government was making a second attempt to pay damages to surviving workers from the ghettos, who unlike slave labourers compensated since 2000, generally earned a small -- albeit often negligible -- wage.

In 2002, the German parliament passed a law to grant these survivors a small pension, but the drive proved unsuccessful due to bureaucratic complications in processing the claims.

In view of this, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has now instructed the German finance ministry to settle the claims in a non-bureaucratic manner, and set up a fund based on the model used for the slave labour victims, the magazine said.

A spokesman for the finance ministry said only that talks were underway with the Jewish Claims Conference in New York about how many of the victims had yet to be compensated.

''Talks are still at an early stage,'' he told Reuters.

The magazine said there was still disagreement about the sums involved in the compensation. While the finance ministry is considering a sum of around 10 million euros (13.02 million dollars), the Jewish Claims Conference is seeking 80-100 million, it said.

REUTERS SBA BST0426