Volkswagen Sued for 'Nazi Nursery' By JIM CHILSEN Associated Press Writer MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Lawyers claiming to represent Russian and Polish slave laborers during World War II filed a class-action lawsuit Wednesday against German automaker Volkswagen, seeking reparations for the deaths of up to 400 children. The lawsuit says the children, put in a nursery near a Volkswagen plant where their parents were forced to build munitions and the "Beetle," died from maltreatment and poor conditions. "If they had been German they would have been cared for period," said Lyn Rahilly, one of the attorneys. "They were not cared for. The issue here is genocide." The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee, accuses the company of genocide and war crimes. Volkswagen A.G. reissued a statement first released in November after CBS News aired a report on the nursery. The children's death at the nursery "is a tragic chapter from one of the darkest times of modern history," the statement said. "The widespread practice of forcing infants and children to be taken from their mothers and placed in special children's homes throughout Germany was another manifestation of the inhumanity of the Third Reich in World War II," it said. A company spokesman said there would be no other comment. The lawsuit lists only one laborer -- 78-year-old Anna Snopczyk of Poland, a slave laborer whose 2-month-old baby died at the nursery. Rahilly said the lawyers hoped the case would encourage others to come forward. The suit, which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, was based on information from war-crimes investigations and trial records, Rahilly said. It was filed in Milwaukee partly because of the area's large Polish population, she said. Several other lawsuits in the United States have been brought by former slave laborers against Volkswagen and other German companies, seeking compensation for their experiences during World War II. Lead attorney Michael Hausfeld, based in Washington, has been involved in several class-action cases brought on behalf of slave laborers and Holocaust survivors, including one against Swiss banks that resulted in a $1.25 billion settlement for Holocaust survivors. AP-NY-05-05-99 1813EDT<
