ABSTRACT
Why, in contrast to various other countries, there was no initiative in the Germany to form a truth commission along or prior to the launching of a policy and industrial initiative for the compensation of the Nazi forced labour. The author stress two points: First, in Germany a growing awareness of the problem, coming from historical research and public debate, had preceded the formation of the compensation initiative. Second, from the start it was the consensus of primarily the German side. Why the surviving slave labourers from the Mauthausen concentration camp were incorporated into the German rather than the Austrian responsibility. This was a result of the boycott by other European governments at the time of the negotiations of the new black-blue Austrian government, due to Jorg Haider’s indirect involvement in it. This was also an incentive to accelerate the Austrian move towards the compensation.
