Germany to Pay Jewish Victims of Nazis
WASHINGTON, Nov. 6— The Government of Germany has quietly signed an agreement to pay millions of dollars to European Jews who survived Nazi persecution but were never compensated or received minimal compensation.
The agreement between the German Finance Ministry and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany was signed last week in Bonn and announced today in New York by Rabbi Israel Miller, chairman of the claims conference. A German Embassy spokesman confirmed that the agreement had been signed.
The accord was completed at a time when Germany has been swept by right-wing radical political demonstrations and actions against foreigners and against Jews.
"This historic agreement with the German Government will make it possible for some of the most severely persecuted victims of Nazism -- almost all of them elderly and needy -- to live out their days in dignity and relative financial security," Rabbi Miller said. Communist Obstruction Ends
Compensation of Jewish survivors of the Hitler era, in which about six million Jews were killed throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, was begun in 1952 by the West German Government under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Billions of dollars were distributed in the form of a lump sum to Israel and to individual survivors. That program expired in 1965.
East Germany, then and later under Communist rule, also paid compensation to German Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution living on its territory.
But scores of thousands of Jewish survivors across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were unable to file claims with either German Government because that was not allowed by Communist governments.
Their situation changed in 1989 with the collapse of Communist governments in Eastern Europe. They are the Jews who will be eligible to claim payments under the new agreement, which is an outgrowth of the unification of Germany two years ago. 50,000 May Be Eligible!
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/07/world/germany-to-pay-jewish-victims-of-nazis.html?paewanted=2