BERLIN (Own report) - Germany is still paying war victims' pensions to Nazi collaborators abroad, while refusing any compensation to the numerous victims of the Nazis. As was reported a few weeks ago, more than 2000 former Nazi collaborators, living in various European countries, are still receiving monthly state pensions of up to €1,275 from Germany. This has caused considerable anger. However, the administration offices in charge are willing to "examine" the cases of only four former members of the Waffen-SS living in the Netherlands. The German state pays a monthly total of three-quarters of a million euros to former collaborators - whereas it is not in a position to pay a symbolic €2,500 as compensation to an 83-year-old man, who, had been abducted as a child from his parents in occupied Poland to be "Germanized" in Germany. Last week, a German court rejected his final appeal. The Nazis had abducted up to 200,000 children to the Reich.
Particularly children from Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia and Norway, were victims of this abduction. Nazi "race" specialists had classified them apt for "Germanization," because of their physical characteristics, such as blond hair, blue eyes. Their parents had been abducted into forced labor or murdered, if they had not already died through the conditions of the war and terror of occupation. The children were then sent to SS Lebensborn homes or foster families. They were robbed of their identity - forbidden also to speak their mother language - and subjected to the process of "Germanization" through physical and psychological coercion. Frequently, because they had been abducted at a very early age, they had never learned of their fate. Others, who had remembered or learned of their abduction, had to make extensive investigations, just to learn their original name or true date of birth. Many suffered or - if alive - still suffer from the psychological consequences of their abduction. (more...)
No comments:
Post a Comment