Reparations talks with Germany fail to produce quick agreement

FRANKFURT, Aug. 20 (JTA) — Jewish negotiators have failed in their effort to reach a quick agreement with Germany on reparations to Holocaust survivors living in Eastern Europe. Unable to secure a deal during talks in Bonn this week, the German government and a delegation of Holocaust survivors and Jewish officials of the Conference on Material Claims Against Germany announced the establishment of a joint commission to recommend solutions in three months. Friedrich Bohl, the chancellery minister representing the German government in the negotiations, said at a news conference he was optimistic a solution could be found. Israel Singer, the secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress who led negotiations for the Claims Conference, said the commission was an important development in the long-running effort to seek justice for the so-called “double victims” of World War II “They were twice victims — once of Nazism and the second time of Communism,” Singer said Wednesday of the Eastern European survivors who never received reparations. “We saw to it today,” he said, that “that they will not be a third time victimized.” But Singer did not divulge further details of what was discussed. Parliamentary members of the opposition Green Party, who have long urged the government to pay survivors in Eastern Europe reparations similar to those who live in Western countries, said it was unacceptable to further postpone the decision when survivors are dying every day. Germany has paid more than $54 billion in compensation to Holocaust survivors since World War II. However, those living in Soviet bloc countries were unable to apply for compensation during the Cold War, and Communist East Germany refused to make any payments. The Claims Conference and other Jewish groups are now demanding that these survivors, estimated to number between 15,000 and 40,000, be deemed eligible for compensation. Germany has come under increasing pressure to reach an agreement amid revelations that it is paying pensions to thousands of SS and Nazi police veterans living in Eastern Europe and outside of Germany while refusing to compensate Eastern European Holocaust survivors. Last year alone, Germany paid 1.1 million veterans and dependents of Nazi Germany’s armed forces so-called disability pensions totaling nearly $8 billion, according to recently published figures. The recipients included tens of thousands of suspected war criminals. Germany began allocating some money to Eastern European victims after the collapse of communism. But Jewish groups have complained that much of the money never reached Jewish survivors or that the one-time lump payments of up to several hundred dollars amounted to only a fraction of payments to Western victims, who have been given monthly pensions. Bonn, for its part, has argued that the payments went far in the poor economies of the former Eastern bloc. The two sides, meanwhile, also agreed Wednesday to set up another commission to examine the criteria under which Holocaust survivors outside Eastern Europe are considered eligible to receive reparations. About 27,000 survivors in Israel, the United States, Canada and other Western countries currently receive monthly reparations of about $275. Jewish organizations estimate that between 20,000 and 100,000 other victims receive no pensions because of restrictive criteria. In order to receive payments today, an individual must have spent at least six months in a concentration camp or 18 months in a ghetto and have an annual income of less than $14,000. In advance of this week’s negotiations in Bonn, Washington made sure its position on the matter was clear. President Clinton brought the issue up with Kohl during a visit here this spring. And earlier this month, 82 senators signed onto a letter urging Germany to make immediate payments to Eastern European survivors. A resolution attached to the foreign operations bill in the House also calls for immediate payments. “We find it distressing that your government has refused to provide any meaningful compensation to this forgotten group of Holocaust survivors,” states the senators’ letter to Kohl, which was circulated by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), whose father, the late Sen. Thomas Dodd, was a leading prosecutor at the postwar Nuremberg trials. The American Jewish Committee, which also has been outspoken on the issue, placed the letter in ads in American and international newspapers last week as part of a public campaign to pressure Germany into agreeing to a quick settlement. (JTA correspondent Daniel Kurtzman in Washington contributed to this