Kolodziejek spent the entire war in the camps. He worked for three horrific years at Auschwitz, eventually at a job carting rubber solvents for IG Farben, the German chemical giant. Later he constructed planes for Messerschmitt at Mauthausen, a slave-labor camp operated by the Nazis in Austria. His experience is a reminder of the strategy behind the thousand-year Reich’s 12-year reign. Nazi Europe was run as a kind of pyramid scheme: conquer a country, then enslave its citizens to empower the machine to conquer more. Under fascism, the corporations that sustained this empire thrived on the low overhead provided by millions of slave laborers like Kolodziejek.

Until now, most of these companies escaped history’s notice. Only three firms–Farben, Krupp and Flick–were prosecuted after the war, and a few more paid a pittance in compensation. But in recent months, inspired by last year’s $1.25 billion settlement between victims of the Holocaust and Swiss banks, lawyers have filed more than two dozen class-action lawsuits alleging that manufacturers, construction outfits, banks and insurance companies in Europe, Britain and the United States profited from the Holocaust. German companies, of course, have attracted most of the legal attention: marquee names like Daimler-Benz, Volkswagen, Siemens and dozens of others allegedly enslaved hundreds of thousands of Poles, Czechs, Russians and Ukrainians to build camps and armaments and to work in plants. Last week a top aide to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder met with survivors groups and U.S. officials to try to fashion a universal settlement covering German companies. Lawyers expect the settlement to exceed $10 billion.

Germany, however, is not the only legal target. In Australia, former POWs and civil internees are pressing actions against the Japanese over their own enslavement. U.S. lawyers are discussing another suit with Moscow on behalf of Russian slave laborers, NEWSWEEK has learned. In addition, half a dozen U.S. companies with German subsidiaries that operated during the war, including GM and Ford, are being investigated by lawyers such as Washington attorney Michael Hausfield, one of several who filed the Polish suit.

All this is a lesson in how the 20th century’s darkest horror haunts the 21st century’s greatest goal: global integration. As Swiss banks discovered last year, expansion into the U.S. market makes foreign companies vulnerable to suits filed in U.S. courts–and public opinion. Not surprisingly, the key figure behind the push for a German corporate settlement is Deutsche Bank chairman Rolf Breuer, who wants to buy America’s Bankers Trust. Now he faces a possible boycott in the United States–and a threat to his merger plans–if he doesn’t deal. ““Only if the banks make moral, historical and financial restitution is it possible for us to move to the next stage of development of the global economy,’’ warns Alan Hevesi, New York City’s comptroller. Hevesi heads a nationwide network of 900 state and city officials who control hundreds of billions in pension funds. That’s money that buys the stock of global banks like Deutsche –which recently admitted that it financed the building of Auschwitz–and that the bank wants to manage.

Bonn is also mindful of the public-relations disaster that hit the stubborn Swiss government when it delayed settlement last year. The Germans are anxious to establish a fund by Sept. 1, the 60th anniversary of the invasion of Poland. ““German companies are ready to compensate,’’ Schroder told reporters last week. But he wants ““a high degree of legal certainty.’’ Translation: we’ll pay, but no more lawsuits.

For survivors, compensation would be welcome. But so would the recognition that could come with such an award. Like Kolodziejek, nine out of 10 surviving slave laborers are not Jewish, and little attention has been paid to their story. His daughter, Patricia, bitterly recalls how he was snubbed by Jewish claims groups when they discovered his religion. ““I meet survivors on the street,’’ says Kolodziejek, a handyman who now lives in a row house in Queens, N.Y., on $609 a month in Social Security. ““I say I was at Auschwitz. But they just look at me’’–suspicious of the mere fact that he survived when most Jews did not. ““I suffered just as much as them,’’ he says angrily. ““I suffered more than many.’’ If there is, as expected, a settlement in the next few months, he may suffer a little less.