July 14




ISRAEL:






Survivors get tiny slice of Holocaust compensation


Poriya Hospital near Tiberias will soon be getting a state-of-the-art
underground hospitalization ward at a cost of $7.8 million. Some $1.2
million of the costs will be paid for by the Conference on Jewish Material
Claims Against Germany, the umbrella group that represents the Jewish
people in negotiations for Holocaust compensation. The Claims Conference
will provide funding for the project at Poriya and the other hospitals in
the north of the country out of monies earmarked for the benefit of
Holocaust survivors in Israel. Group officials say 31 percent of patients
at Poriya Hospital are survivors, and that their proportionate share in
the project is even lower.

Nearly $200 million intended for improving the lives of Holocaust
survivors in Israel have gone in recent years to building hospital
departments, old-age homes and nursing facilities. These investments
alleviate the plight of hospitalization and serve the general Israeli
public, including Holocaust survivors. But survivor advocacy groups say it
is preposterous for the Claims Conference to do the Israeli government's
job while tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors are in need of help.

The Claim Conference's board of directors yesterday approved allocations
for many dozens of organizations and institutions throughout the world
that deal with the Holocaust and survivors. Every year this body
distributes some $100 million, about half of which goes to Israeli
entities.

To date, the Claims Conference has given out over $1.5 billion. The source
of the funding is proceeds from the sale of real estate in East Germany.
The Claims Conference received the properties under a clause in German law
that recognizes it as the owner of all assets belonging to Holocaust
victims without heirs. The board of directors decided to divide the money
as follows: 80 percent to organizations that deal with the welfare of
remaining survivors, and 20 percent to organizations that deal with
documenting the Holocaust, research and education.

However, Haaretz has discovered that in practice, less than half the money
goes directly to helping survivors. The reason for this is that in Israel,
unlike the rest of the world, the Claims Conference invests in
constructing permanent buildings. In recent years, the Claims Conference
funded the building of new departments at all major hospitals in Israel,
was a partner in building more than 100 daycare centers for the elderly
and in building hundreds of rooms at old-age homes run by the Jewish
Agency's Amigur network.

Survivor groups estimate that 30 percent of Israel's elderly citizens are
Holocaust survivors. At some of the projects funded by the Claims
Conference, the rate is even lower. Journalist Raul Teitelbaum says that a
random check in 2005 at an assisted living building in Ashdod, built with
the help of the Claims Conference, revealed that 97 percent of the tenants
are not Holocaust survivors. In his book, "The Biological Solution,"
Teitelbaum explains that the Jewish organizations that are in charge of
the Claims Conference were opposed throughout the years to allocating
monies to survivors and prefered to distribute them for other needs.

In May, a committee headed by Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog
determined that Holocaust survivors in Israel urgently need aid totaling
NIS 1.2 billion annually. The committee found that there are 170,000
survivors in Israel who do not receive any aid, of which 60,000 are in
need of immediate help. The main body that assists survivors is the
Holocaust Survivors Welfare Fund, which gets $40 million a year from the
Claims Conference.

Reuven Merhav, chairman of the Claims Conference's executive committee,
said in response that it has been allocating funding to enhance the
infrastructure for Israel's elderly survivors for over half a century.
These allocations are limited to the one-time costs, but they serve to
"leverage large amounts of additional funding for both the remaining
one-time costs as well as the maintenance costs over many years."

Merhav added that the proportion of survivors using these facilities is
far greater than the percentage of funding by the Claims Conference.

(source: Ha'Aretz)





GERMANY:

Congressmen send letter to Germany over Holocaust pensions


A group of congressmen urged Germany to pay the pensions of Holocaust
survivors.

Germany's Ghetto Pension Law was designed to compensate Holocaust
survivors employed as slave laborers in Nazi ghettos, but 94 percent of
the 70,000 applications submitted for the pension have been rejected,
according to the Claims Conference.

In a letter Tuesday addressed to German Minister for Labor and Social
Affairs Franz Muntefering, 20 members of Congress led by Rep. Henry Waxman
(D-Calif.), said the program is not determining eligibility appropriately
and that applicants should be able to have their cases re-opened and
re-evaluated.

Some of the congressmen who signed the letter had penned similar requests
in August 2004 and May 2005. Former Minister Ulla Schmidt responded in
June 2005, promising to address the issues and speed up the application
process.

(source: JTA)