German industry is prepared to take out a loan if it fails to raise the five billion marks (2.6 billion euros/2.8 billion dollars) it has pledged to compensate former laborers enslaved under the Third Reich, a newspaper reported Friday.
The Berliner Zeitung, citing industry sources, said that the 17 companies that had started the compensation fund would borrow the remaining money if needed to ensure that payments to victims can begin as hoped in March and to buy time to raise the full amount.
German companies and the federal government agreed last summer to create a 10-billion-mark fund for the victims of the Nazi slave labor programs.
While Berlin has set aside its five-billion-mark share, industry has only raised 3.4 billion marks, leaving a 1.6 billion mark deficit.
German President Johannes Rau, major industry groups and other public officials have urged companies to contribute, even if they were founded after the end of World War Two, as a gesture of reconciliation and an international signal of Germany's good will.
Some 5,500 companies have heeded the call -- BERLIN (AFP)
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