Cologne - A court yesterday overturned a landmark ruling by a court in Bonn that a Nazi-era slave labourer was entitled to compensation from the German government.
The state court in Cologne rejected the claim of Ms Rywka Merin, a Polish woman who emigrated to Israel in the 1960s, along with those of 20 other Jewish former slave labourers who had worked in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Judge Hans-Peter Prior ruled that Germany's compensation law for the victims of Nazism did not include any provision for payments purely for slave labour. Victims could, however, claim for maltreatment they suffered while working as slave labourers.