An account settled

Vienna

Austria has just finished paying compensation to people who were used as slave laborers during World War II, when the country was occupied by Nazi Germany. The $350 million Austrian Reconciliation Fund made the last of its payments to 132,000 former forced laborers or their families this week. A German fund is compensating approximately 800,000 other people who were compelled to work in Austria. Burt Neuborne, a member of the board of trustees that administers the German fund, said the German mania for record-keeping in all things, even slavery, made it fairly easy to track down the former laborers. “In a sense it’s a tribute to Teutonic efficiency,” he said. “I say that with some irony.”