Paris ? France will compensate thousands of people whose parents were victims of “Nazi barbarity” in World War II, including those killed in massacres or for resisting the German occupation, the government said Saturday.

Between 5,000 and 8,000 people likely will be eligible, and will have the choice of either a $30,400 lump sum or monthly payments, said Pierre Mayaudon of the Defense Ministry’s office for war veterans.

The compensation matches that awarded three years ago to 12,600 Jewish orphans whose parents were deported to Nazi extermination camps during the 1940-1945 occupation — a dark chapter in French history because wartime France’s Vichy regime collaborated with the Nazis.

The July 2000 compensation came five years after President Jacques Chirac acknowledged in a speech that Vichy had represented the French state and seconded the Nazi occupiers’ “criminal folly.”

Orphans of deported resistance figures and other non-Jewish victims of Nazi atrocities “considered it unjust” that they were not covered by the same package, Mayaudon said in a telephone interview.

In a statement Saturday first announcing the new compensation, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said that “in the interests of justice and fairness” the package was being extended to “orphans of victims of Nazi barbarity.”

Compensation will be paid after Hamlaoui Mekachera, secretary for war veterans, determines exactly how many people are eligible, Raffarin said. That process will likely take several months, said Mayaudon, Mekachera’s office director.