Germany to aid struggling Holocaust survivors around the world $662 million for COVID-19 relief

Holocaust survivors around the world will soon receive aid from the German government, which has agreed to provide more than half a billion euros to survivors struggling from the coronavirus. 

World War II ended 75 years ago, making the survivors elderly and vulnerable to COVID-19. Many were deprived of proper nutrition as youth and now face medical issues, which could make them more susceptible to the virus.

The German payments will go to about 240,000 holocaust survivors around the world over the next two years, primarily people in Israel, North America, the Soviet Union and Western Europe, according to the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference.

“There’s this kind of standard response for survivors, that ‘we’ve been through worse, I’ve been through worse and if I survived the Holocaust, through the deprivation of food and what we had to go through, I’ll get through this,’” Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Claims Conference, told the Associated Press.

Survivors, more specifically Jews who fled the Naizs and aren’t receiving pensions from Germany already, will receive two payments of 1,200 euros ($1,400) out of the total German aid totaling approximately 564 million euros ($662 million).