A German retail giant agreed Friday to pay a Jewish family $117.2 million for a plot of land in the heart of Berlin that it lost under the Nazis, resolving one of the city's longest-running World War II-era compensation disputes.Under the agreement, KarstadtQuelle AG will also retract competing claims it had with heirs of the Wertheim family on 50 other properties throughout Berlin and its surrounding state of Brandenburg, clearing the way for those plots to be restituted.
"It was our interest to do justice to our responsibility in terms of history," KarstadtQuelle chief executive Thomas Middelhoff said in a statement announcing the deal.
The money will flow through the Jewish Claims Conference, which said it will use an unspecified amount of the income to fund programs for Holocaust victims. The rest will go to heirs of the Wertheim family.
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