Difficulty in Filing Holocaust Claims

* Your article about the way in which Holocaust survivors must relive the terrible horrors of their past, and the difficulties encountered in proving those horrors (“Proof of Suffering Is Price of Holocaust Reparations,” June 4) brought to light many important issues. At Bet Tzedek Legal Services we have assisted, completely free of charge, many hundreds of survivors in their efforts to apply for reparations payments.

Sadly, the experiences of our clients are that in most instances it takes at least three years for reparations applications to be processed. It is only after this lengthy delay that the applicants first learn whether the evidence submitted in support of their claim is deemed to be sufficient. If it is not, they must try to gather additional documentation, which is, as is described in your article, very difficult and time-consuming. Considering that all of the applicants are elderly and indigent, this delay alone can be decisive.

We applaud the efforts of the Claims Conference to push for more liberal eligibility requirements.

Not just monetary reparations payments are at stake. At stake is a small measure of salvation and dignity for those who deserve, and have waited for, so much more.

DAVID A. LASH

Executive Director

Bet Tzedek Legal Services, L.A.

* From my long experience as a restitution lawyer in Germany, the trouble seems to be that the Claims Conference in dealing with claims from survivors of the Holocaust has no body that controls it.

The German government put an adequate amount of money at the disposal of the Claims Conference. The inadmissibility of affidavits, the demand for birth certificates and the monetary limit as a proof of neediness are strictly demands by the Claims Conference, and not issued by the German government. On the contrary, the German authorities and courts have long since found out that records were destroyed--if they ever existed-- during the war in Eastern Europe. The regular German restitution laws, as contrasted with the regulations of the Claims Conference, explicitly allow testimony in the form of affidavits by witnesses and not necessarily official records.

On one point the German government is to blame, in leaving the distribution of ample funds to the Claims Conference without attempting to supervise the allotment.

URI SIEGEL

Munich, Germany