Holocaust Survivors from former USSR Denied Reparations

Chamber of Horrors: Through this tunnel entrance near Nordhausen, Germany, lies a vast underground factory where 60,000 slave laborers; who where forced to build the world's first ballistic missiles for Germany. Prisoners were let out once a week for roll call. Half of them died.

18 June 2008

By Anshel Pfeffer

Some 11,000 Holocaust survivors who moved to Israel from the former Soviet Union are not receiving reparations from Germany because the Claims Conference, an international body that grants compensation to survivors, did not translate the payment request regulations into Russian, MK Michael Nudelman (Kadima) charged at a Knesset Immigration and Absorption Committee meeting yesterday.

Nudelman, the committee chairman, said that many Russian-speaking survivors were disqualified from receiving compensation because they filed their requests before they reached the designated age, but were unaware of the problem because they did not understand the regulations.

Reuven Merhav, who heads the Claims Conference's executive committee, acknowledged that it was a mistake not to have translated the regulations, but a conference representative said all the explanatory material has been available in Russian for more than a decade. Merhav also told the Knesset committee that the Claims Conference does not have the funds available to pay reparations to 11,000 additional Holocaust survivors.

On Monday, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss was asked at a State Control Committee discussion of the Claims Conference's conduct to investigate the relationship between the Claims Conference and the government.

However, MK Zevulun Orlev (National Union-National Religious Party) said that since the Claims Conference is officially registered in the United States, it is not under the state comptroller's supervision.

At the meeting, Pensioner Affairs Minister Rafi Eitan said that a small cadre within the Claims Conference was deciding how to distribute the payments, and the other executive committee members were rubber-stamping their decisions. Eitan said the conference was unwilling to review the number and location of living Holocaust survivors so as to reflect that most of them live in Israel. He added that the group was unwilling to discuss an end to its operations once the survivors die out. However, Eitan said he would not ask the German government to reconsider the role played by the Claims Conference.

Three weeks ago, Judge Oded Mudrik ruled that the conference was negligent for failing to inform survivors who had fled to the Soviet Union that they were eligible to receive compensation, and ordered the conference to compensate 1,315 additional survivors.