The International Organization for Migration (IOM) will distribute between 35 and 40 million dollars to non-Jewish claimants of a fund set up to compensate victims of Nazism, the agency said here on Friday.
IOM spokesman Thomas Weiss said it would process claims from the 1.25 billion dollar fund in three classes, two of them involving slave labor and the third for refugees.
Swiss banks and American Jewish organizations first agreed in 1998 on the 1.25 billion dollar settlement for Holocaust victims and their heirs, mostly over dormant wartime bank accounts.
The deal was finalized in January 1999 but needed endorsement by a United States court to be legally binding.
As part of the settlement, all US law suits against the Swiss banks by Holocaust victims or their heirs will be dropped.
Last month a New York judge approved a plan of allocation and distribution for the fund.
The IOM will distribute funds to all the non-Jewish claimants, including Roma gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and physically or mentally handicapped people who were forced to work for companies that banked money from their labor or used it in transactions through Swiss banks.
It will also deal with claimants who were forced to work for Swiss companies or their German subsidiaries, and non-Jewish victims who tried to enter Switzerland to avoid Nazi persecution but were denied entry or were deported after entering, or were detained or mistreated.
Two other organizations help in the distribution to claimants -- the Jewish Claims Conference and Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts in Switzerland -- GENEVA (AFP)
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