Fraud delays some Holocaust payments
HOLOCAUST survivors in Australia who are entitled to a payment under a hardship fund will have to wait three months longer to receive their restitution, as a result of a massive, multi-million dollar alleged fraud in the United States.
HOLOCAUST survivors in Australia who are entitled to a payment under a hardship fund will have to wait three months longer to receive their restitution, as a result of a massive, multi-million dollar alleged fraud in the United States.
The one-off payments, equivalent to 2500 euro each, are made through the New York-based Claims Conference to former Soviet Jews who suffered under Nazism and qualify for hardship support.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) president and Claims Conference board member Robert Goot said the three-month delay is due to a suspension of payments under the hardship fund, while US investigators conduct their probe.
But he said indirect recipients of Claims Conference money in Australia, through Jewish Care or other local agencies, will not be affected.
And he made it clear that no legitimate recipients of any restitution funding have been or will be deprived of their payments.
The ECAJ, like Jewish peak organisations around the world, is a constituent of the Claims Conference and is represented on the organisation’s board.
Earlier this month, the US Attorney’s Office in New York arrested 17 people, including former Claims Conference employees, for allegedly defrauding the organisation of $US42.5 million through false applications for restitution.
The amount reportedly scammed is worth more than a tenth of the Claims Conference’s annual receipts of $US400 million from the German Government.
Goot described the alleged crime as “a most regrettable event and one that can’t in any way be dismissed or minimised”.
But he played down ideas that the scandal has created a potential field day for anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, who besmirch Shoah victims by claiming, among other things, that talking about the Holocaust is a grab for money. “Of all the regrets in relation to the fraud, the possibility of adding grist to the mill, as it were, of Holocaust deniers is not uppermost in my mind,” he told The AJN.
The ECAJ president emphasised that no Holocaust victims will lose payments, because Germany is obliged to make up the loss and the Claims Conference is simply the administrator of the funds.
Asked if a similar scam could operate in Australia, Goot explained there is no organisation in Australia that processes claims on behalf of Holocaust survivors.
“Organisations within Australia that receive money from the Claims Conference receive it for services they provide to survivors and that’s fully documented and can be checked — and is checked and validated.”
Goot will make a full report on the fraud at next week’s ECAJ conference.
PETER KOHN
PHOTO: Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Robert Goot. Photo: AJN file
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