The work of the compensation fund of the German Catholic Church has borne fruit: a per caput sum of 2,556 euros has been paid out to 594 individuals. The figures emerge from the presentation in late August of the balance sheet by the president of the German Bishops’ Conference Cardinal Karl Lehmann and by the president of the German Caritas agencies, Msgr. Peter Neher. The fund had been set up by the German bishops on 28 August 2000, 60 years after the end of the Second World War, as a concrete gesture of pardon and reconciliation to those men and women who were forced to work in the ecclesiastical institutions. “Our reflections were guided by three principles: compensation, reconciliation, memory”, said Cardinal Lehmann, pointing out that “a measured response to the legacy of National Socialism could not be exhausted with the symbolic payment of a material indemnity”. The fund has so far supported 175 projects of solidarity promoted by German Catholics in favour of victims of forced labour in Central and Eastern Europe, for a total financial commitment of over 2.5 million euros. After a research project lasting four and a half years it emerged that 8 foreign workers out of every 10 in the employ of the Catholic Church were employed in the farm sector and in the domestic economy. This group, in 2000, had appeared as a minority among forced labourers. “Caritas, and the support of the parish communities explains Peter Neher have enabled us to conduct research in the archives of the various dioceses”. The hard work and commitment put into the research have been understood by most of the persons involved as a gesture of compensation and reconciliation.
