The German government has agreed to compensate around 25,000 Jewish Algerian Holocaust survivors for the first time. The survivors will be able to apply for a one-time grant later this year, according to a rights organisation.
Jews who suffered abuse at the hands of the Nazis in Algeria between July 1940 and November 1942 will be eligible for the one-off payment amounting to $3,183, according to an international Jewish group that distributes Holocaust compensation funds on behalf of the German government, the Conference on Material Claims against Germany said.
The Claims Conference, founded 1951, is a non-profit organisation that helps survivors to be compensated. Since 1952, the German government has given around $70 billion in compensation to those affected by the Holocaust.
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“This is a long overdue recognition for a large group of Jews in Algeria who suffered anti-Jewish measures by Nazi allies like the Vichy Regime,” Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Claims Conference, explained. “The Vichy government subjected these people to restrictions on education, political life, participation in civil society and employment, abolishing French citizenship and singling them out only because they were Jews.”
The Vichy regime governed some parts of France and its colonies between 1940 and 1944 and collaborated with Nazi German forces present in France.
A registration centre for the survivors to claim the money is now open in Paris where they mostly live and will operate until April 2018 along with other centres in Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse.
Approximately 3,900 Jewish Algerian survivors currently reside in Israel which the Claims Conference will reach via direct mail explaining the procedure for their compensation. Compensation payments will be distributed from July.
According to the conference’s representative, Ruediger Mahlo, the main act of compensation is to recognise the survivors who suffered during the Holocaust.
“This payment is a small measure of the justice these survivors deserve, but the recognition is important and we will continue to fight until every survivor has been recognised,” Mahlo said in the statement.