IG Farben, Chemical Giant With Nazi Past Files Bankruptcy

Nov 10, 2003
IG Farben, Former German Chemical Giant With Notorious Nazi Past, Files for Bankruptcy
By David McHugh, Associated Press Writer

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - IG Farben, the former German chemical giant that used thousands of slave laborers at Auschwitz, said Monday it will file for bankruptcy. The filing means IG Farben likely will not pay further compensation payments to victims.

Once the world's largest chemical firm, most of IG Farben's assets were confiscated after World War II and were transferred to four big German corporations: Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa and BASF.

IG Farben remained as a trust to settle claims and lawsuits from the Nazi era, and its shares continued to be traded on the German stock exchange.

IG Farben's war-related factories included a notorious synthetic rubber plant at the Auschwitz death camp complex where 30,000 inmates worked until they died or were deemed unfit for work and sent to the gas chambers. The company also formerly held a 42.2 percent share in Degesch, which produced the Zyklon-B cyanide tablets used to gas death camp inmates.

Company executives were given prison terms by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals after Nazi Germany's in 1945 for their role in the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews died.

Jews in Western Europe who were forced to work at IG Farben plants by the Nazis received compensation in the 1950s. But the company refused to contribute to a $5.9 billion national fund in 2001 that began compensating remaining former slave laborers, most from East Europe.

Monday's news conference drew about 30 young protesters, who held placards asking "Where Is The Money To Compensate The Victims?" and whistled at the trustees as they left.

Trustee Volker Pollehn told a news conference that the trust had planned to continue until 2004 but the company was forced to file bankruptcy after a failed deal to sell its last remaining substantial asset - a set of real estate holdings valued at around $19.7 million.

The trustees say that all direct legal claims against the company by former laborers have been settled but the company had hoped to put money from the real estate sales toward cases involving people who missed deadlines or lacked documents to receive payment from the national fund, Pollehn said.

"Unfortunately, our own liquidity is no longer sufficiently secured," Pollehn said.

Henry Mathews, who heads a group of IG Farben shareholders, urged banks to forego their claims in bankruptcy court in favor of remaining victims. His group obtained IG Farben trust shares to enable them to attend shareholders meetings and press the company to pay.

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