Volkswagen yields to war-time slaves

Oskar Schindler, the real-life hero of Steven Spielberg's epic Schindler's List, saved Jewish concentration camp victims from extermination by employing them as forced labour in his factory. Had he gone on to build a successful post-war business, like many other Nazi-era entrepreneurs, he might now be faced with another difficult moral choice: should he offer to pay compensation to his former slaves? He would not be alone. While Schindler ran his business into the ground as a protest against the brutal, genocidal system which provided him with cheap labour, others were less scrupulous.

From international household names such as Volkswagen, Siemens, BMW and Leica to construction giants such as Hochtief and Zueblin, the roll-call of companies that grew fat on World War II slave labour reads like a Who's Who of German industry.

An estimated seven million foreign workers were brought in to provide cheap labour in thousands of German factories during the war. At least five million of those, according to evidence presented at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials of the late 1940s, were deported from across Europe to slave in German factories in appalling and brutal conditions.

Now the victims, spurred on by successful campaigns against banks and insurance groups which profited from Nazi greed and brutality, are demanding reparations.

And, after half a century of bucking responsibility, some of the world's biggest industrial giants are suddenly ready to comply. The threat of legal action and concern for vulnerable markets is persuading major German exporters to re-examine their past.

Volkswagen, maker of Hitler's 'people's car' - better known as the Beetle - is leading the way.