[wvns] Children of Holocaust Survivors Sue Germany for Psychiatric Care
Children of Holocaust Survivors Sue Germany for Psychiatric Care
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289487,00.html
JERUSALEM — A group representing thousands of children of Holocaust
survivors filed a class-action lawsuit against the German government
Monday, demanding that Germany pay for their psychiatric care.
The Israelis, calling themselves second-generation Holocaust
survivors, say the scars of the Nazi genocide on their parents have
crossed generations. Many still live with an irrational fear of
starvation and incapacitating bouts of depression, the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit marks "the very first time that the German government will
be asked to take responsibility and to care for those of the second
generation in Israel and indeed, worldwide," attorney Gideon Fisher
said before filing the suit at the Tel Aviv District Court.
In Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry declined comment, but the
country was likely to see the suit as a window for an indefinite
number of future claims.
The suit seeks to set up a German-financed fund to pay for biweekly
therapy sessions for 15,000 to 20,000 people, or about $10 million
annually for three years.
"If they will not do it voluntarily, and unfortunately they have not
done it so far, then I really hope the president of the court here in
Tel Aviv would make them take responsibility," said Fisher, a child of
Auschwitz survivors who founded the Fisher Fund, the nonprofit group
behind the lawsuit.
Baruch Mazor, the fund's director, said 4 to 5 percent of the 400,000
children of survivors in Israel require treatment. Since many cannot
hold steady jobs, they cannot pay for their own treatment, and aid
from the Israeli government and health insurance have been inadequate,
he said.
About 4,000 people have joined the suit, he said.
"The only thing we are asking for is some kind of financial help in
order to give them psychiatric treatment. There will be no money
passed from hand to hand," Mazor said Monday.
It was unclear what standing the Israeli court would have in a damages
case against a foreign country.
Mazor said the Tel Aviv suit was a first step aimed at winning
recognition that Germany bears responsibility for the suffering of
survivors' children. The plaintiffs will then try to negotiate a
settlement, or will take their case to a German or an international
court, he said.
Since the 1950s, Germany has paid more than $60 billion in reparations
to concentration camp survivors, families of the some of the 6 million
Jewish victims, and to the state of Israel. Much of that money went to
the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New
York-based organization that negotiates with Germany and distributes
the payments.
Mazor said money handled by the Claims Conference is earmarked for
survivors, and their children did not want to detract from those funds.
The suit says the second generation grew up "in the shadow of
depression, grief and guilt of their parents, which created a powerful
inclination among the children for pain and suffering."
Children had a "twisted relationship with their parents" that impeded
their development and led to severe psychological problems, the suit
claims.
One 58-year-old woman told her story to Israel Radio Sunday, saying
she inherited the fear of starvation experienced by her parents in
Auschwitz, where inmates prized any crust of bread they could obtain.
"If you come to my house and open the freezer, loaves of bread fall on
you, without any proportion to what I really need," the woman said.
She declined to disclose her name, but Mazor said she spoke for thousands.
She said she felt as if she had no childhood, and jumped directly into
adolescence. The feeling conveyed by her father was: "I went through
hell, and what you are going through is nothing," she said.
Others of the second generation say they cannot ride buses because it
reminds them of the transports their parents took to the concentration
camps, or they fear dogs because they were used by the Nazis to
control crowds.
Mazor said the Fisher Fund held lengthy negotiations with the German
Embassy over the compensation claims, but the talks were cut off by
the Germans.
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