France and Austria agree to compensation for Holocaust victims
France and Austria are planning to pay millions of dollars to Jews whose property and money were seized in the Holocaust.
Austria has already signed an agreement with the US government to pay $500m in return for dismissal of lawsuits over property seized from Jewish victims.
France is now expected to pledge compensation to those who have sued over bank accounts confiscated during the Vichy regime.
"Like all nations, we have to live up to our past, the deeds of all Austrians bad or good, the fact that Austrians were perpetrators, onlookers and victims," said Austrian envoy Ernst Sucharipa, who signed the agreement at the State Department.
The top US envoy for Holocaust issues, Stuart Eizenstat, has refused to say how much money was at stake in the French plan because financial negotiations still were under way, but one lawyer for the families, Kenneth McCallion, has spoken of a "multimillion-dollar sum".
