Germany has agreed to one of its largest financial compensation packages for Jewish Holocaust survivors, amounting to $1.2 billion. The package includes a special fund in the amount of $12 million for 8,500 people who are in Ukraine.
This is reported by The New York Times.
The funds that will be allocated next year will mainly help cover the costs of medical care for Jews. Germany will also, for the first time, offer funding for educational processes in memory of the Holocaust.
"Seventy years on, we still stand in the shadow of six million murdered Jews. Their suffering still haunts the Jewish people and the German people," said Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference.
Participants in the negotiations on new reparations said that the decision to allocate special funds for Ukrainian Holocaust survivors was inspired by conversations with elderly people who had been evacuated from Ukraine since the beginning of the war. This is not the first time Germany has agreed to special payments, it also offered special Holocaust payments during the pandemic to cover the cost of vaccinations and other medical needs.
Germany announced its first compensation package for Jewish Holocaust survivors in Luxembourg in 1952. It was the first time that a nation defeated in a war decided to pay reparations to individual victims of its aggression. Since then, Germany has been regularly negotiating with the Claims Conference on new reparations payments. German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said at the event that this would not be the last time the country offers compensation.