Israeli Holocaust survivor wins German pension 01/02/2007 00:00

Dusseldorf (dpa) - A Jewish woman, 77, who worked as a dental nurse in a Nazi concentration camp has won a German pension, a welfare tribunal in the city of Dusseldorf said Thursday.

Born in Prague and now living in Israel, she was detained at Theresienstadt, a fortress at Terezin, now in the Czech Republic, where the Nazis created a softer detention centre to hide the horrors of the Holocaust from inspectors of the International Red Cross.

Inmates were encouraged to play music and carry on professions to create the impression of a thriving Jewish ghetto, though in reality many were destined to be killed. The claimant convinced the tribunal that she worked in Theresienstadt for money, not as a slave.

A 2002 law extending German pensions to Jewish people who worked in ghettoes during the Second World War has caused ill-feeling because it does not apply to slave labour. A court spokeswoman said that 98 per cent of applications for such pensions had been rejected.

The claimant described working for nine months helping a dentist in Theresienstadt. The tribunal said the peculiar role of Theresienstadt as a show camp made it plausible that this was not slave labour. The level of her pension has yet to be set.

In another ruling this week, a New York man, Maurice Deluty, 83, won a German pension for his voluntary work as a cabinetmaker in the Jewish ghetto of Nowe Miasto, Poland, newspapers reported.

A fund set up by industry and the German government has separately paid billions of euros in compensation to former slave labourers.

DPA

Subject: German news