U.S.A Today  01/15/99- Updated 02:41 AM ET
Germany to pay U.S. Holocaust survivors

WASHINGTON - In secret negotiations with U.S. officials, Germany
has  ''agreed in principle'' to provide millions of dollars to U.S.
citizens who were  imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.

The deal will yield one-time payments of $30,000 to $250,000 for
each of the up to 235 Americans who have claims to the
reparations money, according to  parties involved. But claimants
probably won't see checks for at least six  months, even though
the deal was supposed to have been completed a year ago.

''Why has it taken so long?'' asks Frank Barwacz, 81, a Chicagoan
who twice  escaped execution during more than two years at
Auschwitz and other camps.   ''We're suffering. . . . Where's the
justice?''

At least five of the claimants have died while waiting for their
money; others are ill.

The deal, which is expected to cost Germany $15 million to $25
million, ends a  decades-long campaign by Americans who
survived the Holocaust but never got any of the $1 billion Germany
has paid in reparations to Europeans held in concentration
camps.

It comes amid renewed global interest in settling Holocaust
matters of all  kinds, such as finding heirs to victims' Swiss bank
accounts and returning  Nazi-looted art.

The Americans' claims were supposed to be presented to
Germany in  September 1997 for negotiations on payment. But the
process was stalled by  bureaucratic and diplomatic delays,
including election of a new German  government.

Most Americans who were sent to concentration camps either
were Jewish-Americans living overseas when the war broke out or
captured soldiers who were Jewish or considered troublemakers.

German and U.S. State Department officials declined to discuss
details of the  payment agreement sealed last month.