Newly released papers may hamper US firm's legal battle against slave labour claimsNewly released Nazi documents show the Ford Motor Company was one of 500 firms which had links with Auschwitz, Polish officials said yesterday, delivering a setback to Ford's attempts to extricate itself from allegations that it profited from wartime slave labour....The papers discovered include construction plans, orders for raw materials and reports. They also name the German industrial giants Krupp, Siemens and IG Farben....Ford has also argued that the statute of limitations on the victims' claims had expired.But Burt Neuborne, a New York University law professor representing the slave labourers and their families, said: "Time can never shield a war criminal, either criminally or civilly."One of the former slave labourers suing Ford is Elsa Iwanowa, 74, who has testified that she was abducted as a teenager along with 2,000 other children from a Russian village and forced to build military vehicles at the Nazi-run Ford plant.The lawsuit, the first of its kind against a US company, was inspired by the success of Nazi victims in securing reparations from Swiss banks which had profited from Nazi wartime deposits.It claims Ford's German plant "became an eager, aggressive and successful bidder for forced labourers", and alleges that senior Ford executives knew that thousands of workers were being abused.
