Germany commits additional 800 million dollars for home care to Holocaust survivors
By JTA
The
German government has agreed to significantly expand its funding of home care
for infirm Holocaust survivors and relax eligibility criteria for restitution
programs to include Jews who spent time in so-called open ghettos. The
agreement, reached after negotiations in Israel with the Claims Conference,
will result in approximately US$ 800 million in new funding for home care for
Holocaust survivors from 2014 to 2017. This is in addition to US$ 182 million
for 2014 that already has been committed.
In
2015, the amount will rise by 45 percent, to approximately US$ 266 million, and
then to US$ 273 million in 2016 and to US$ 280 million in 2017. Because the
sums are set in euro, the actual amounts may change depending on currency
fluctuations.
The US$ 84 million
increase in funding between 2014 and 2015 will represent the largest
year-over-year increase since the program began with € 30 million
(approximately US$ 36.6 million) in 2004, though a bigger percentage increase
took place in 2010, when funding doubled from € 55 million (US$ 68 million) to
€ 110 million euro (US$ 136 million).
“With
this new agreement, the Claims Conference will be able to both increase the
number of beneficiaries, thus eliminating waiting lists of survivors for home
care, as well as increase the number of hours per person to a minimum level of
dignity,” Claims Conference Chairman Julius Berman wrote in a letter to the
organization's board. Some 56,000 survivors are now receiving home care through
the Claims Conference.
The
announcement of new funding comes amid controversy for the Claims Conference
over revelations related to bungled investigations in 2001 that failed to
detect a broad fraud at the Holocaust restitution organization.
In
last week’s negotiations, which took place in Israel, Germany also agreed to
relax eligibility criteria for the Central and Eastern European Fund and
Article 2 Fund, through which the German government gives pension payments of
approximately US$ 411 per month to needy Nazi victims who spent significant
time in a concentration camp, in a Jewish ghetto in hiding or living under a
false identity to avoid the Nazis.
Until
now, only those who were interned in closed-off ghettos were eligible for
pensions. As of 1 January 2014, pensions will be available also to those forced
to live in any of 300 specific open ghettos, such as those in Czernowitz, Romania, where Jews lived under curfew,
lost their jobs and were subject to persecution.
Germany
in negotiations to take place this fall also agreed to discuss possible special
aid for child survivors.
The
session that just concluded was the first time since restitution negotiations
with Germany began in Luxembourg in 1951 that talks were held in Israel. For
decades, the negotiations were held only in the German capital. In recent
years, sessions also were held in New York and Washington.
Before
they began negotiating last week, German representatives met with survivors in
Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak and Jerusalem, visiting
private homes where survivors are receiving home care, a senior day center and
a soup kitchen. They also took a guided tour of the Yad VashemHolocaust
memorial and museum in Jerusalem. The negotiations were held in a classroom at Yad Vashem.
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