Germany Pays $662 Million To Holocaust Survivors Suffering In Coronavirus Outbreak

By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News 

(Worthy News) – Germany has agreed to give $662 million in aid to some 240,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors struggling under the burdens of the coronavirus pandemic, the group involved in the talks said.

The New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany announced that the payments would be distributed over the next two years to survivors worldwide. 

Most of them are in Israel, North America, the former Soviet Union, and Western Europe added the group, also known as the Claims Conference.

“These increased benefits achieved by the hard work of our negotiation’s delegation during these unprecedented times will help our efforts to ensure dignity and stability in survivors’ final years,” said Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference. 

At least 6 million Jews were killed in World War Two, many of them in Nazi death camps. Those who survived still carry the wounds of history. 

Some 75 years after the war, elderly Holocaust survivors suffer from numerous medical issues as they were deprived of proper nutrition when they were young, officials said. 

ISOLATED LIVES

Additionally, many live isolated lives, having lost their entire families and face psychological issues due to their persecution under the Nazis. 

Greg Schneider, the Claims Conference executive vice president, suggested that the coronavirus outbreak added to the misery of survivors. 

He said survivors believe they can get over the pain and the coronavirus crisis, having lived through horrors such as food deprivation. “But if you probe deeper, you understand the depths of trauma that still resides within people.”

About 50 percent of Holocaust survivors in the U.S. live in Brooklyn and were particularly hard-hit when New York was the center of the COVID-19 outbreak, Schneider said. Now infection rates numbers are looking worse in Israel and other places.

Each of the targeted survivors, many of them living in poverty, will receive two payments of 1200 euro ($1,400) over the next two years, Worthy News learned.

NO PENSIONS

The new funds are for Jews who do not receive pensions from Germany, primarily people who fled the Nazis and ended up in Russia and elsewhere to hide during the war. Many have to choose between paying rent, medicine, or food, according to the Claims Conference.

Schneider said about 50 percent of Holocaust survivors in the U.S. live in Brooklyn and were particularly hard-hit when New York was the center of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. Now numbers are looking worse in Israel and other places.

Schneider said each targeted survivor would receive two payments of 1,200 euros ($1,400) over the next two years. 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 a 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.

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. That includes food, medicine, transportation to doctors, and programs to alleviate social isolation.

Separately Germany reportedly agreed to recognize 27 “open ghettos” in Bulgaria and Romania, enabling survivors who were in those places to receive compensation payments. These are results of negotiations with the Claims Conference since 1952, which led to the German government paying more than $80 billion in Holocaust reparations.

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