Terezin – Former U.S. secretary of state Czech-born Madeleine Albright made her palm print for a gallery in Terezin today and on this occasion she recalled 24 members of her family who died in various concentration camps during World War Two.
The gallery is situated in the former garrison town of Terezin that served as a ghetto for European Jews during World War Two, while the nearby Small Fortress turned into a Gestapo prison.
Albright learnt about her Jewish origin only in the other half of the 1990s when journalists revealed that her grandparents and many other relative became the Holocaust victims.
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The Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, better known as the Claims Conference, appointed former government administrator Shmuel Hollander as its ombudsman, the group announced on Tuesday. Hollander – who served as a Civil Service commissioner under Prime Ministers Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon and Olmert – will be tasked with overseeing the activities of the organization, which represents Jewish victims of the Nazis and their allies in talks with European governments over compensation.
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An Israeli couple, both renowned journalists, issued an apology Monday, over a film they directed, to the Jewish organization responsible for negotiating with Germany on restitution for Holocaust survivors.
The film, “Moral Reparations – The Struggle Continues”, charges that The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany – better known as the Claims Conference – has “more than $1 billion” in its accounts and is withholding it from needy survivors. In 2008, the Claims Conference filed a NIS 4 million libel suit against the journalists, stating that “the film is a cruel and distorted calumny,” is “replete with false factual allegations,” and that “the spirit of the film is sometimes anti-Semitic.” The timing of the television broadcast in Israel – on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2008 – “turned the Claims Conference into the enemy of the Jewish people.” The libel suit was filed on September 4, 2008.
Three years later, the sides reached an agreement whereby the journalists, Orly Vilnai and Guy Meroz, together with the production company Shamayim Productions Ltd., issued an official apology and committed to paying NIS 150,000 to the Claims Conference.
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Posted on February 8, 2012 in:
Claims Conference,
Restitution|Comments Off on Claims Conference Urges German Government to Extend Retroactive “Ghetto Pension” Payments
The Claims Conference expressed its disappointment about today’s ruling of the highest German Social Court that most Holocaust survivors receiving so-called “Ghetto Pensions” from Germany (German Social Security for work in ghettos) will not get payments retroactive to 1997 as had been hoped.
Ghetto Pension back payments are made retroactively for four years, with a maximum dating back to 2005. The German Federal Social Court ruled that the 2002 legislation establishing Ghetto Pensions (ZRBG), calling for payments to be made in principle retroactively to 1997, does not supersede the four-year retroactive limit that has been used in accordance with general Social Security guidelines. However, the Bundestag is considering legislation that will make the Ghetto Pension payments retroactive to 1997.
“The Claims Conference regrets that the German Federal Court did not award Ghetto Pension payments dating back to 1997. Ghetto survivors endured the most horrific conditions possible while laboring just to stay alive. In their old age, these additional payments could help bring them the security and recognition that they were denied so many decades ago. We appeal to the German Government and to the German Bundestag to look for a political solution. Time is more than pressing to provide a measure of justice to these elderly survivors,” said Julius Berman, Claims Conference Chairman.
Ghetto survivors who have not yet applied for the Ghetto Pension should do so at once. Information on applying for the Ghetto Pension and the related one-time payments of the Ghetto Fund, and criteria, are at www.claimscon.org/ghettopension. These are not Claims Conference programs. Survivors must apply to the relevant German Social Security offices (DRV) listed on the Claims Conference website.
The Claims Conference is reaching out to survivors of Nazi ghettos and to the agencies that work with them in an effort to ensure that every potential claimant has a chance to claim both the Ghetto Fund one-time payment and the Ghetto Pension. Since 2010, the German government has been reconsidering more than 56,000 previously denied claims for the Ghetto Pension and will contact applicants whose claims have been accepted. All of these claims have now been reviewed.
Germany has agreed to changes to one of its restitution programs that will add payouts of approximately $3,300 to some 10,000 Jews, the Claims Conference announced. The changes, which will affect the Hardship Fund, will expand the class of World War II survivors eligible for one-time payouts to those who fled Soviet areas that were never occupied by the Nazis but were within about 62 miles of the Nazi line. Until now, only survivors from areas that eventually were occuppied by the Nazis were eligible.
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NEW YORK — After a year of tough negotiations, Germany has agreed to pay pensions to about 16,000 additional Holocaust victims worldwide — mostly survivors who were once starving children in Nazi ghettos, or were forced to live in hiding for fear of death. The agreement announced Monday between the New York-based Claims Conference and the German government is “not about money — it’s about Germany’s acknowledgment of these people’s suffering,” said Greg Schneider, the conference’s executive vice president.
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