Holocaust panel vilified

JERUSALEM — Aging Holocaust survivors, many in their late 70s and 80s, are complaining they suffer from poverty, insufficient medical care and inadequate housing while the organization that is supposed to care for them sponsors costly educational projects and pays its executives lavish salaries.

The criticisms are directed at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which consists of 24 Jewish organizations based in the United States and other countries.

It funnels money allocated by the German government to Jews who were interned in Nazi death camps, were confined to ghettos and suffered religious and racial persecution during World War II.

The claims conference, as it is popularly known, has financial reserves that exceed $1 billion, according to experts.

The sum not only includes the constant and punctual flow of funds from the Berlin government, but also money from dormant Swiss bank accounts whose original owners perished in the Holocaust and life-insurance policies never redeemed by their beneficiaries.

At the modest office of the Organization of Former Prisoners of the Nazis in downtown Jerusalem, Yosef Fuchs laughed when asked how much money he receives from the claims conference.

He said it deposits 810 euros ($945) in his bank account every three months.

“You cannot exist on that money,” he said.

Mr. Fuchs’ plight mirrors that of an estimated half-million Holocaust survivors, most of whom no longer have gainful employment and many of whom face the prospect of geriatric care that they cannot afford.

It applies to wartime death camp inmates, ghetto resistance fighters and slave laborers around the world, including in the United States.

The American survivors’ bitterness and disappointment was expressed by Leo Rechter, executive director of the National Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

Addressing a U.S. Jewish community session on services rendered to Holocaust survivors, Mr. Rechter said: “U.S. soldiers who were prisoners in Iraq for 10 days are received as heroes, but survivors who were enslaved for years are treated like second-class citizens or mendicants.”

Israel Singer, president of the claims conference, justified its manifold activities beyond the transfer of payments to individual survivors, although he conceded that “the cultural activities must take second place to their needs.”

He said it was essential to act against “Holocaust denial” in Germany and to promote “informational projects” around the world.

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