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KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — Some Jews here say they may never benefit from a fund established two years ago to compensate Ukrainians who suffered under the Nazis.

In 1994, the Fund for Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation was created to distribute about $270 million from Germany to Ukrainian victims of Nazism.

The compensation is distributed in one-time payments of about $600 to concentration camp and Jewish ghetto survivors. Similar funds exist in Russia and Belarus.

But Jews — who make up less than 1 percent of potential beneficiaries — say the fund's guidelines make it difficult, if not impossible, for them to obtain the funds.

"At the beginning, two testimonies from the witnesses were enough to claim the compensation," said Klara Vinokur, head of the Kiev organization of Holocaust survivors.

Then the fund began demanding often-destroyed archival documents proving the existence of particular Jewish ghettos or that the applicant was on a list of concentration camp inmates.

Orthodox leaving circumcision group

LONDON (JTA) — An Orthodox Jewish group has decided to pull out of an interdenominational group on circumcision because of the presence of Reform movement representatives.

Last week's decision by the Initiation Society, the British Jewish mainstream Orthodox body in charge of brit milah, was criticized by the Reform movement, and the Initiation Society's president, Aharon Winegarten, said he did not back the move.

The working group was established by the Jewish Board of Deputies last year to defend circumcision after a British television program criticized brit milah, causing an outcry in the Jewish community.

"We feel it would be wrong on all counts to work with Reform," said Dr. Morris Sifman, the Initiation Society's medical officer. "Working with them would make it look as if they're under the same umbrella as the Orthodox and they're not."

The chairman of the working group, Henry Grunwald, said he found the controversy "incomprehensible."

"We've always made it clear that it's not our intention to debate religious matters, but simply to protect our right to carry out circumcision," he said.

Jewish Agency head hopeful on Russia

MOSCOW (JTA) — The chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel is continuing to express hope that the status of agency operations in Russia will soon be settled.

"We are working on this, and I do hope that very soon" the question of the agency's accreditation in Russia "will be over," said Avraham Burg during a trip to Moscow.

The agency is establishing a new organization, the Jewish Agency in the Russian Federation, which is intended to settle an ongoing dispute between the agency and Russian authorities about the agency's accreditation.

The agency's decision to create a new body comes in the wake of the Russian Justice Ministry's recent refusal to renew the accreditation, which was canceled in April.

By listing Russians among the new body's founders, the agency appears to be trying to change how its activities are perceived by Russian authorities, who have viewed the agency as foreign-based.