Germany agrees $662 million to aid Holocaust survivors
Germany has agreed to provide more than a half billion euros to aid Holocaust survivors struggling under the burdens of the coronavirus pandemic, the organization that negotiates compensation with the German government said Wednesday.
The payments will be going to approximately 240,000
survivors around the world, primarily in Israel, North America, the former
Soviet Union and Western Europe, over the next two years, according to the New
York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred
to as the Claims Conference.
With the end of World War II now 75 years in the past,
Holocaust survivors are all elderly, and because many were deprived of proper
nutrition when they were young today they suffer from numerous medical issues.
In addition, many live isolated lives having lost their entire families and
also have psychological issues because of their persecution under the Nazis.
“There’s this kind of standard response for survivors, that
‘we’ve been through worse, I’ve been through worse and if I survived the
Holocaust, through the deprivation of food and what we had to go through, I’ll
get through this,’” said Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Claims
Conference, in a telephone interview from New York with The Associated Press.
“But if you probe deeper you understand the depths of trauma
that still resides within people.”
Many are also on the poverty line, and the additional costs
of masks and other protective gear, delivery groceries and other
pandemic-related expenses has been crushing for many, Schneider said.
“You’re teetering between making it every month,” he said.
“Having to decide between food, medicine and rent.”
The new funds are targeted to Jews who aren’t receiving
pensions already from Germany, primarily people who fled the Nazis and ended up
in Russia and elsewhere to hide during the war.
Schneider said about 50% of Holocaust survivors in the U.S.
live in Brooklyn and were particularly hard-hit when New York was the center of
the American outbreak, but now numbers are looking worse in Israel and other
places.
“It’s a rolling calamity,” he said.
Each of those survivors will receive two payments of 1,200
euros ($1,400) over the next two years, for an overall commitment of
approximately 564 million euros ($662 million) to some of the poorest survivors
alive today.
The funds come on top of an emergency $4.3 million the
Claims Conference distributed in the spring to agencies providing care for survivors.
In addition to the coronavirus-related funds, Germany agreed
in the recently concluded round of annual negotiations to increase funding for
social welfare services for survivors by 30.5 million euros ($36 million), to a
total of 554.5 million ($651 million) for 2021, the Claims Conference said.
Germany’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the
latest round of negotiations.
The money is used for services including funding in-home
care for more than 83,000 Holocaust survivors and assisting more than 70,000
with other vital services, including food, medicine, transportation to doctors
and programs to alleviate social isolation.
As a result of negotiations with the Claims Conference since
1952, the German government has paid more than $80 billion in Holocaust
reparations.
Part of the Claims Conference’s annual negotiations also
includes working with Germany to expand the number of people eligible for
compensation.
This year, the German government agreed to recognize 27
“open ghettos” in Bulgaria and Romania, enabling survivors who were in those
places to receive compensation payments.
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