Eugene Dubow, the head of the American Jewish Committee in Germany, said, ''If Mr. Schroder thinks there is a campaign against Germany, perhaps he does not totally understand the issue of people waiting 50 years for justice.''
The Clinton Administration, aware of the potential impact of the suits on German-American relations, has followed the issue closely.
The announcement followed protracted negotiations led by Bodo Hombach, Mr. Schroder's chief of staff, and Stuart E. Eizenstat, the State Department Under Secretary for Business and Economic Affairs. Mr. Eizenstat is expected in Germany next week.
The 12 companies that announced their participation in the fund today were DaimlerChrysler, Deutsche Bank, Siemens, Volkswagen, Hoechst, Dresdner Bank, Krupp, Allianz, BASF, Bayer, BMW and Degussa.
The list -- involving the auto, banking, chemical, insurance and other industrial sectors -- covers many of Germany's top industrial names. They invited other companies to join them.
At a time when German companies have been on a buying spree overseas -- last year the auto manufacturer Chrysler and the publisher Random House were both acquired by German companies -- the slave-labor question has been particularly sensitive.
Deutsche Bank is still trying to complete the purchase of Bankers Trust, the financial services company. But the acquisition has met some resistance in the United States, pending clarification of slave-labor and other issues. The German bank said this month that it had helped finance Auschwitz.
In New York, the City Comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, said that if the proposed fund is set up, he will drop his objections to the proposed takeover. ''I haven't seen the details but it's a very positive sign,'' he said. ''This is what we've been looking for.''
Rolf Breuer, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, was with Mr. Schroder today.
He said the fund amounted to a ''large step in the right direction, but there are still a lot of details to sort out.''
Among the ''details'' is the planned establishment of a German Federal fund alongside the one financed by the companies. How large it might be is not clear.
Mr. Schroder's statement said, ''A suitable link with the companies' initiative must now be found.''
The companies said part of the fund would be used to compensate slave laborers and other victims and part to finance ''forward-looking projects on the basis of understanding of the Nazi past.''
The quest to find a balance between remembrance and forward-looking themes has become something of a German obsession of late, affecting a still unresolved debate over a Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, the new capital.
Behind the discussions lies an evident German thirst to be ''normal'' and embrace the future in a country where the vast majority of people alive today played no role in the Holocaust.
