Berlin announces new Holocaust compensation deal
Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the first Holocaust compensation agreement on September 15, 2022. AFP - TOBIAS SCHWARZ
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Seventy years after the first agreement between West Germany and Israel on the compensation of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews of Europe, new support from Berlin was announced this Thursday on the sidelines of a ceremony marking the start of reparations after the crimes of the Third Reich.
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With our correspondent in Berlin,
Pascal Thibaut
According to the media, there are 14,000 death camp survivors in Israel, very old and in need of care for which their means are often not sufficient.
After long negotiations between the Jewish state and Germany, Berlin undertakes to pay 58 million euros per year to these people to improve their care.
"
This is an important agreement
," said the Israeli Minister of Social Affairs.
Concretely, the survivors of the Holocaust concerned will receive an additional monthly pension of 350 euros.
More than 90 billion euros of compensation in total
The announcement of this compromise took place the same day of a ceremony in Berlin for the 70ᵉ anniversary of an agreement by which Federal Germany undertook to pay three billion Deutsche Marks of the time to compensate victims of the Holocaust.
Since that date, Berlin has disbursed more than 90 billion euros in compensation for the persecutions of Jews under the Nazi regime.
On Thursday, Chancellor Scholz stressed that “
this agreement could in no way call into question the guilt of the Germans.
It was intended to assume moral responsibility for a page of our history where all morality had disappeared
”.
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