FRANKFURT, Germany -- Shareholders of IG Farben, a World War II-era chemical giant that worked thousands to death in Nazi camps, voted amid protests Wednesday to set up a fund to compensate former slave laborers.
Holocaust survivor groups and young leftists protested in and outside the meeting hall, demanding IG Farben pay more than the 3 million marks ($1.6 million) it has offered for the fund.
Later, security guards hustled out several young protesters who challenged company officials when they threatened to bar a vocal former slave laborer, Hans Frankenthal, from speaking.
Trustees of the former conglomerate, which was broken up by the victorious wartime allies in 1953, acknowledged IG Farben's "historic responsibility'' and said the fund - formally a foundation - would be set up later this year.
First payments will go to former slave laborers older than 80 who toiled for IG Farben at the Auschwitz death camp, said trustee Otto Bernhardt, a federal lawmaker. Several hundred survivors would likely be eligible, he said.
But former slave laborers, who see the continued existence of IG Farben as an insult, want the company liquidated and its assets of 27.8 million marks ($14.9 million) distributed to victims, most of whom are elderly.
"Regardless of the foundation, there will be no peace with IG Farben,'' declared Peter Gingold, an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor whose family died at the Auschwitz death camp. The company's shares are "sticky with blood,'' he told reporters.
The Nationwide Alliance Against IG Farben, a German pressure group, has called the company's offer "ridiculously low.''
IG Farben is one of the most potent remaining symbols of Nazi evil, and its shareholder meetings have sparked regular protests in recent years.
Formed in 1925, the company was the world's largest chemical concern during the war and one of its subsidiaries manufactured Zyklon-B, the gas used for killing Jews and other Nazi concentration camp inmates.
At the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, IG Farben ran a slave labor plant where more than 83,000 people toiled at its peak in 1944.
After the war, the allies divided up IG Farben's assets among Hoechst, BASF, Bayer and other chemical companies. IG Farben remains as a trust to settle claims and lawsuits from the Nazi era.
Pressure for a gesture by IG Farben has grown since major German companies agreed last winter to set up a compensation fund in hopes of quashing U.S. lawsuits on behalf of former slave laborers.
About 500 lawsuits are pending against IG Farben in German courts.
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