World Report

TOKYO (JTA) -- A hall commemorating a Japanese diplomat who saved some 6,000 Jews during the Holocaust was completed in his hometown, Yaotsu.

Chiune Sugihara's memorial recreates the interior of the Japanese Consulate in Lithuania, where he worked during World War II. It includes replicas of the transit visas he issued to Jews fleeing Poland and will open in summer.

German restitution faces another hurdle

BERLIN (JTA) -- The upper house of the German Parliament approved a bill that paves the way toward a $4.6 billion fund to compensate Nazi-era slave laborers.

U.S. and German officials hope to complete a deal by June 1, but German industry wants guarantees of immunity from future legal action in the United States.

Swiss siblings paid for parents' deaths

ZURICH (JTA) -- Switzerland agreed to pay $118,000 to a Jewish brother and sister whose parents were killed after they were kicked out of the country during World War II.

Charles and Sabine Sonabend will receive an out-of-court settlement, but the court stopped short of calling the payment "compensation" out of fear it would encourage other claims from Holocaust survivors.