Germany will pay around 800 million euros ($1.03 billion) over a four-year period for homecare for the ageing survivors of the Holocaust, a Jewish organization said on Wednesday.
Worldwide Compensation Programs
Below is a list of compensation programs available to Holocaust survivors worldwide. This list is for informational purposes only. For programs that are not administered by the Claims Conference, please contact the program directly for information on how to apply. >>more<<
The Jewish Claims Conference, which represents Jews in negotiations on compensation for Nazi victims and their descendants, said some 56,000 Holocaust victims worldwide, over a third of them living in Israel, would benefit from the aid.
“We are seeing Germany’s continued commitment to fulfill its historic obligation to Nazi victims,”Stuart Eizenstat, the Claims Conference special negotiator, said in a statement on the organization’s website.
“This ensures that Holocaust survivors, now in their final years, can be confident that we are endeavoring to help them live in dignity, after their early life was filled with indescribable tragedy and trauma.”
A German finance ministry spokesman confirmed the details of the compensation.
“This is all the more impressive since it comes at a time of budget austerity in Germany,” added Eizenstat, a former U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
The Claims Conference said it had worked closely with the German finance ministry to calculate the victims’ needs.
In the negotiations, the two sides also agreed to widen the scope of existing pension programs to include Jews who lived in “open ghettos”, that is without walls but still in constant fear of deportation by the Nazis, the Claims Conference said.
The former West Germany acknowledged the murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and began in 1952 to pay compensation eventually worth 3 billion marks (1.5 billion euros) to Israel. >>MORE<<
Short URL: http://www.newsnet14.com/?p=125248
thank you for the info below Belatucadros
“Does this mean when those 56,000 die we can drop the whole thing?”
No it doesn’t, Germany is contractually obligated to pay whatever Israel clams it owes (while adding things like this to it) until the year 2050. They are not just paying this money to “Jews” either. The following i seen a few days ago and found it interesting:
No End in Sight
Germany Has Paid Out More Than $61.8 Billion in Third Reich Reparations
Since 1951 Germany has paid more than 102 billion marks, about $61.8 billion at 1998 exchange rates, in federal government reparation payments to Israel and Third Reich victims. In addition, Germans have paid out billions in private and other public funds, including about 75 million marks ($49 million) by German firms in compensation to wartime forced laborers, the Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported recently. These figures are based on calculations by the German Finance Ministry, the influential paper said.
Of the total, Germany has paid out 78.4 billion marks ($47 billion) on the basis of the 1965 Federal Restitution Law (BEG) to persons, especially Jews, who had been persecuted during the Third Reich era on the basis of race, religion, origin or ideology.
While most of those who were alive during the Second World War are now dead, in recent years Germany was still paying out some 1.25 billion marks (about $75 million) to 106,000 pensioners in Israel, the United States and other countries on the basis of the 1965 Restitution Law.
A substantial portion of Germany’s reparations payments have been to the “Jewish Claims Conference” for Jews who had persecuted by the Third Reich. Recipients include former forced laborers and concentration camp internees, as well as individuals deprived of rights or property under the Nazis. Based in New York City, the Jewish Claims Conference (JCC) has operated for decades as a kind of supra-national governmental agency for Jews around the world.
Between 1992 and July 1998, the German federal government paid out 1.1 billion marks (about $647 million) to the JCC. During the first half of 1998, it made available 378 million marks (about $222 million) to the JCC in special one-time restitution payments for Jews who had persecuted by the Third Reich, according to a German government report issued on September 29, 1998. The JCC distributed up to 5,000 marks each to individual claimants.
In recent years Germany has paid out nearly 1.8 billion marks on the basis of special bilateral agreements concluded in 1991 and 1993 with Poland and three successor states of the former Soviet Union — the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus (White Russia) — even though in 1953 Poland and the Soviet Union each renounced any further reparations payments from Germany.
Because there’s no sign that German reparations payments will stop anytime soon, the Welt am Sonntag wonders if they might be “bottomless.” In coming years, Finance Ministry specialists estimate, Germany will pay out an additional 24 billion marks (about $14.4 billion at a recent exchange rate) in Third Reich reparations.
(Sources: J. Kummer, “Wird die Wiedergutmachung ein Fass ohne Boden?” Welt am Sonntag, Oct. 4, 1998, p. 54; Reuters’ dispatch, Bonn, Oct. 3, 1998; The Week in Germany, published by the German Information Center in New York, Oct. 2, 1998; Focus on “German Restitution for National Socialist Crimes,” May 1995 special report by the German Information Center; “Milliardenloch Wiedergutmachung,” D. National-Zeitung [Munich], Nov. 20, 1998, p. 7. See also: “West Germany’s Holocaust Payoff to Israel and World Jewry,” in the Summer 1988 Journal, pp. 243-250.)
From The Journal of Historical Review, Nov.-Dec. 1998 (Vol. 17, No. 6), page 19.
From The Journal of Historical Review, Nov.-Dec. 1998 (Vol. 17, No. 6), page 19.
As soon as i can find the one (article outlining the contract and length of the contract Germany is obligated to) i first mentioned I will post it.
Holocaust Compensation and Restitution By Country
(December 2005)
For the latest information and additional links to the programs described below,
please visit the The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany
| |||||
