The Claims Conference recently negotiated changes with the German government that should make more Holocaust survivors eligible to collect ghetto pension and one-time ghetto fund payments.
Raisa Moroz, Holocaust case manager at Jewish Family & Children’s Services, explains that under previous ghetto pension rules, people had to have lived in a ghetto, in hiding or under a false identity for 18 months to qualify; now the time has been reduced to 12 months. This makes a difference particularly to survivors from Hungary, she notes, which wasn’t occupied until 1944. The one-time ghetto fund payment is for survivors 75 or older who were in a ghetto for at least three months, she explains. Previously, people could receive one payment or the other; now they may qualify for both. One of her clients, she says, recently received a one-time payment from the ghetto fund of 2,000 euros plus a $300 monthly pension.
Another rule change affects survivors who fled from the Nazi advance in some areas of the former Soviet Union that were never occupied, who may now qualify for a one-time hardship fund payment from the Claims Conference. Moroz has already been contacted by several new clients who fled from Leningrad and Moscow. She can be reached at 795-0300, ext. 2214.
