New Holocaust Money

From Yahoo News:
"16,000 Holocaust victims to get German pensions"

After a year of tough negotiations, Germany has agreed to pay pensions to about 16,000 additional Holocaust victims worldwide — mostly survivors who were once starving children in Nazi ghettos, or were forced to live in hiding for fear of death. The agreement announced Monday between the New York-based Claims Conference and the German government is "not about money — it's about Germany's acknowledgment of these people's suffering," said Greg Schneider, the conference's executive vice president. Of the new beneficiaries, 5,000 live in the United States. However, part of the agreement does not immediately cover survivors who were young Jewish children born in 1938 or later. "We will continue to press for greater liberalizations to ensure that no Holocaust survivor is deprived of the recognition that each deserves," Stuart Eizenstat, special negotiator for the conference, said in a statement. Germany will now pay reparation pensions to a total of 66,000 people who survived Nazi death camps and ghettos, or had to hide or live under false identity. Under the new rules, which go into effect Jan. 1, any Jew who spent at least 12 months in a ghetto, in hiding or living under a false identity, is eligible for a monthly pension of 300 euros (about $375) a month. For countries in the former Soviet bloc, that amount is 260 euros. Until now, the minimum time requirement for living under such duress was 18 months. The Germans established more than 1,000 ghettos for Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated the "Final Solution" — a plan to murder all European Jews. Some ghettos existed for only a few days, others for months or years, before residents were either shot in mass graves or deported to death camps. Germany also has agreed to offer pensions to those who are 75 or older and spent three months in ghettos like the one operated in Budapest, Hungary, from November 1944 to January 1945. That provision is expected to affect about 4,500 survivors next year and 3,500 more once they turn 75. In another new development announced this week, anyone who worked in the German-run ghettos during World War II may now receive a one-time payment of 2,000 euros (about $2,600) from the German government.

^ I don't understand why Germany is making it so difficult for Holocaust survivors to get the money they deserve for living through the hell the GERMANS created. Anyone who was alive during the Holocaust (even babies and the elderly) and who were in the ghettos, labor camps, death camps, mass graves, in hiding or fled the Nazis from 1933-1945 for even a day should get money from this fund. ^

http://news.yahoo.com/16-000-holocaust-victims-german-pensions-171915634.html