Germany to give $662 million in aid to Holocaust survivors
Source: AP
By DAVID RISING
BERLIN (AP) — 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.
FILE - A picture taken just after the liberation by the Soviet army in January, 1945, shows a group of children wearing concentration camp uniforms at the time behind barbed wire fencing in the Oswiecim (Auschwitz) nazi concentration camp. 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. (AP Photo/CAF pap, file)
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