Tagged claims conference

Through an emergency grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also known as the Claims Conference, Jewish Family & Children’s Services has extended its assistance to Holocaust survivors living in Southern Arizona during the coronavirus pandemic. With the $17,000 grant from Claims Conference’s Holocaust Survivor COVID-19 Urgent… Read more »

(JTA) — The Claims Conference, which manages aid to Holocaust survivors, has negotiated a budget increase through 2018, including the largest one-time increase in homecare funding the organization has ever secured. In talks with the German government, the Claims Conference secured nearly $312 million in homecare funding for survivors… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — A special panel tasked with examining the governance and strategic vision of the Claims Conference is recommending that the organization shift its long-term focus to Holocaust education and remembrance, JTA has learned. The panel was appointed last year following a scandal involving the Claims Conference’s… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The release of a highly anticipated ombudsman’s report about how the Claims Conference missed an opportunity in 2001 to detect a massive fraud scheme is raising serious questions about governance of the organization and pitting the organization’s chief executive against the chairman of its executive… Read more »

German officials laying a wreath at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem as Claims Conference officials look on, May 2103.

NEW YORK (JTA) – The German government agreed to significantly expand its funding of home care for infirm Holocaust survivors and relax eligibility criteria for restitution programs to include Jews who spent time in so-called open ghettos. The agreement, reached after negotiations in Israel with the Claims Conference, will… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – Now that it’s clear that the top leaders of the Claims Conference were involved in investigating an anonymous accusation of restitution fraud in 2001, the question is who bears the responsibility for failing to detect that a broad fraud scheme was underway. The person at the… Read more »

A previously unknown document obtained by JTA shows that concern in 2001 about fraud at the Claims Conference reached the highest levels of the organization. (Claims Conference)

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Claims Conference in recent days has blamed a now-dead regional director for bungling an early warning in 2001 about a massive fraud scheme that wasn’t halted until 2009. But a document obtained by JTA shows top conference officials were sufficiently concerned by the allegations… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – Who knew what, and when? Those are the questions critics are asking following the disclosure that the Claims Conference received an anonymous letter in 2001 identifying several fraudulent Holocaust-era restitution claims — nearly a decade before the organization halted a massive fraud scheme. By 2009,… Read more »

Saul Kagan, founding executive direcor of the Claims Conference, right, talking to Nahum Goldmann, founder and longtime president of the World Jewish Congress, 1958. (Courtesy Claims Conference)

NEW YORK (JTA) — As the founding executive director of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, I remember just how difficult the issue of negotiating with Germany was within the Jewish world 60 years ago. In Israel in particular, it was a subject of enormous controversy, political and… Read more »

Holocaust survivor Larisa Rakovskaya in her Odessa apartment, Sept. 14, 2012. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA) — In her dilapidated apartment, Larisa Rakovskaya examines a stack of unpaid heating bills. Sick and alone, the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor and widow is preparing for another encounter with the cold, her “worst and only fear.” Rakovskaya says her hope of staying warm this winter lies… Read more »

Paulina Goldberg (left) and Raisa Moroz, Holocaust case manager at Jewish Family & Children’s Services, review paperwork at Goldberg’s Council House apartment.

Raisa Moroz, Holocaust case manager/program manager at Jewish Family & Children’s Services, has more than 80 clients on her caseload. But she wants more. “I want people to know this program is available,” says Moroz, who estimates that there are 120 or more Holocaust survivors in Southern Arizona. Every… Read more »

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… Read more »

Gregory Schneider, executive vice presdient at the Claims Conference, together with the U.S. Attorneys Office announced the discovery of a $42.5 million fraud scheme, Nov. 9, 2010. Claims Conference)

NEW YORK (JTA) — The U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York has arrested 17 people for participating in a $42.5 million fraud at the Claims Conference. Those arrested include former and current employees of the Claims Conference, which distributes more than $400 million per year from the German government… Read more »