Survivor of German labor camps not impressed with proposed settlement

The less than 20 remaining Jewish Iowans who were forced to work in Nazi slave labor camps may soon be paid a small stipend for their work. Germany’s parliament has ended its stalemate and released the four-and-a-half billion dollars that is to be paid to labor camp survivors around the globe. David Fishel of Des Moines survived six different concentration camps, and he says the German government’s action is “too little, too late.” He says they didn’t ask him if he wanted the money when he needed it. He says they’ve been saying for 55 years that he would get the money and he hasn’t seen any yet. Fishel says he wants “a little less talk and a little more doing.”Fishel was a slave laborer for companies like Bayer and Daimler/Benz. He says he never got a penny from them even though he worked 12 and 14 hours a day.Some of the businesses also plan to pay survivors of the labor camps. Mark Finkelstein, executive director of Iowa’s Jewish Community Relations Commission, has worked with Iowans who were sent to the camps. Finkelstein says the payments from the German government are a token of restitution of their honor for the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime.Last year, Iowa legislators passed a law which makes any payments concentration camp survivors receive for their forced labor “tax free.”