Some debts can never be repaid. Yet to its credit, Germany has for decades attempted to atone for the Holocaust by paying out billions of dollars to its victims — a burden Germany knows it must carry at least until the last survivor of the Nazi genocide passes from this world.
That’s why we were gratified to learn this week that Germany has agreed to pump an additional $800 million into the Claims Conference — the entity created years ago to funnel reparations checks to survivors — all of it earmarked to provide home care assistance to this aging population.
Currently, the Claims Conference makes payments to 56,000 of these needy survivors around the world. The new funding runs through 2017.
It is true that in recent years the Claims Conference has been the subject of fraud inquiries, and that corruption and ineptitude have marred what should have been a transparent and free-flowing pipeline of restitution dollars. Still, both Germany and the Conference have made commendable efforts over the years.
Yet even as the Shoah generation passes into history, we see a worldwide resurgence of anti-Semitism, much of it in the guise of anti-Zionism, but some of it bald Hitlerian Jew-hatred.
The Golden Dawn party of Greece, Jobbik of Hungary and the National Front of France, all players in their respective countries, make no secret of their vicious anti-Semitic positions. That’s to say nothing of anti-Semitic majorities throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Holocaust denial has always been a pillar of contemporary anti-Semitism, and all the above-named parties indulge in this odious revisionism.
Every time German taxpayers make restitution to Holocaust survivors, they make a profound statement. Not only do they accept responsibility for the crimes of their grandfathers, they also send a message to Holocaust deniers everywhere: This horrific atrocity did indeed happen and must never be forgotten.
We commend Germany for this most recent funding. And we watch with cautious optimism as a bipartisan bill that would facilitate assistance for Holocaust survivors in the United States moves through Congress. The legislation, introduced May 21 in the House and Senate, would add the country’s 120,000 Holocaust survivors to a priority list for social services outlined in the Older Americans Act. This bill would help them remain in their communities, living out their lives in comfort and security.
We all owe them no less.