10/6/2021
Germany to Dedicate Additional $767M for Holocaust Survivors
Breaking Newstags: Holocaust, reparations, Leningrad, World War 2, German history
It’s been 80 years since Nazi soldiers laid siege to the city of Leningrad, Russia, during the Holocaust, but memories of the desperation haven’t faded away for Russian Jews like Raisa Khusid, who survived starvation and bombardment.
Food was so scarce, Ms. Khusid recalled in an interview on Tuesday, that one of her uncles fed them unimaginable things.
“He was actually going outside after the rain to collect the worms,” Ms. Khusid said through a Russian translator on Zoom.
But only now is Ms. Khusid, 80, who lives outside Chicago, eligible for pension benefits from the German government as part of an expanding restitution program for Holocaust survivors, according to the main negotiating organization for those benefits.
The group, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, better known as the Claims Conference, announced on Wednesday that it had secured an additional $767 million in benefits for Holocaust survivors. During the past 70 years, the group estimated, the German government has set aside more than $90 billion for Holocaust survivors.
As part of the most recent negotiations, the Claims Conference said, Germany agreed to recognize the extreme suffering of Russian Jews who had endured the more than two-year Nazi siege of Leningrad, which is now St. Petersburg, Russia.
Because Leningrad had not been occupied by the Nazis during the blockade, which lasted from September 1941 to January 1944, previous restitution efforts met with resistance from German officials, said Stuart E. Eizenstat, the group’s longtime top negotiator.
“They said, ‘Look, well, the non-Jews suffered,’” Mr. Eizenstat, a former U.S. ambassador to the European Union, said on Tuesday. “We were able to show them Nazi fliers that were dropped that said that Jews were the cause of the siege. So their level of persecution was greater.”
comments powered by Disqus
News
- The Debt Ceiling Law is now a Tool of Partisan Political Power; Abolish It
- Amitai Etzioni, Theorist of Communitarianism, Dies at 94
- Kagan, Sotomayor Join SCOTUS Cons in Sticking it to Unions
- New Evidence: Rehnquist Pretty Much OK with Plessy v. Ferguson
- Ohio Unions Link Academic Freedom and the Freedom to Strike
- First Round of Obama Administration Oral Histories Focus on Political Fault Lines and Policy Tradeoffs
- The Tulsa Race Massacre was an Attack on Black People; Rebuilding Policies were an Attack on Black Wealth
- British Universities are Researching Ties to Slavery. Conservative Alumni Say "Enough"
- Martha Hodes Reconstructs Her Memory of a 1970 Hijacking
- Jeremi Suri: Texas Higher Ed Conflict "Doesn't Have to Be This Way"
Trending Now
- New transcript of Ayn Rand at West Point in 1974 shows she claimed “savage" Indians had no right to live here just because they were born here
- The Mexican War Suggests Ukraine May End Up Conceding Crimea. World War I Suggests the Price May Be Tragic if it Doesn't
- The Vietnam War Crimes You Never Heard Of