Germany and the Jewish Claims Conference signed a new groundbreaking accord Thursday to help elderly Holocaust survivors who had never received compensation, most of them living in eastern Europe. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and JCC chief Julius Berman attended a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the Luxembourg Agreement under which West Germany assumed responsibility for the Nazis’ crimes and paid reparations. During the solemn event at Berlin’s Jewish Museum, they sealed a new pact widening the group of people to receive payments, taking in survivors long ineligible because they lived behind the Iron Curtain, and tailoring compensation to ageing recipients’ needs. “The Holocaust survivors who are alive today were young when they emerged from the ashes, but much older before their time,” Berman said. “Old age is hard enough, but many survivors are now feeling in full the effects of the starvation and forced labor of their youths. Their finances have suffered from the years of lost education and lost family assets. And with their careers and child rearing behind them, they have more time alone with their memories of terror and loss.” Under the agreement, an additional 80,000 Holocaust survivors in eastern Europe will receive compensation. It also formalises an entitlement for about 100,000 Jewish victims of the Nazis to home care services.
