Dutch Jews slam Germany over Shoah payment loophole

By Cnaan Liphshiz

Germany is unjustly withholding money from Dutch Holocaust survivors, an umbrella group for Dutch Jews told Haaretz. Yesterday, on the eve of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the group’s leaders presented Germany with a petition protesting “injustice to 2,000 Dutch survivors.”

The bone of contention is a one-time grant the Dutch survivors received in the 1960s. Because of this grant, most of the survivors from the Netherlands are ineligible for compensation under a new arrangement agreed last year.

“We found that because of this one-time grant of some 1,400 euros on average, we’re not entitled to a monthly payment of 270 euros which is guaranteed in Article 2 of the Claims Conference,” said the initiative’s leader, Avraham de Vries.
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Along with the de Vries group in Tel Aviv, a group of Jewish survivors in the Netherlands gave the German embassy in the Hague a copy of the petition, which is addressed to Chancellor Angela Merkel.

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