Holocaust Survivors Claim Compensation Bias

Hundreds of Holocaust survivors, some wearing six-pointed, yellow cloth stars like those the Nazis forced on Jews, jammed the Supreme Court here Sunday to demand more compensation for their suffering.

They came in support of a petition filed by right-wing legislator Avraham Herschenson, who claims regulations discriminate against survivors who arrived in Israel in its early years of statehood.

In September, 1952, Israel and Germany agreed that Bonn would pay reparations to Holocaust survivors living outside Israel and to those who immigrated to the Jewish state beginning in 1953.

Germany also agreed to give Israel money to be passed on to Holocaust survivors who arrived before 1953. But this group received smaller amounts than the sums promised, said Herschenson.

“The state has robbed Holocaust survivors,” said right-wing lawmaker Dov Shilansky, a Holocaust survivor. He added that Israel used some of the German money for unspecified other purposes.

The court gave the Finance Ministry 30 days to respond.

A top government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the gaps resulted from different methods of calculating amounts due to the two groups.

Exact figures were not immediately available on the reparation payments, which generally amount to several hundred dollars a month.

The Globes financial daily said that in some cases, the direct German payment was four times greater than Israel’s. It estimated that about $20 million a year would be needed to bridge the gap for the roughly 20,000 survivors who arrived before 1953 and are alive.

Six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis during World War II.

As of January, Germany had paid nearly $70 billion in reparations to victims of Nazism, the vast majority of them Jews.