Watchdog: Treasury delayed funds for survivors

By Anshel Pfeffer | Aug.16, 2007 | 12:00 AM
The treasury has been guilty of delaying and refusing state aid for institutions that help Holocaust survivors, according to a special state comptroller's report on the treatment of survivors released yesterday.

Government officials and representatives of Holocaust survivors' organizations will meet today in another attempt to agree on ways to help survivors. The sides are discussing the financial compensation to be allocated each category of survivors as well as the medical and other aid for the needy.

Some 250,000 survivors live in Israel today, 143,000 of whom are not eligible for a stipend.

The report finds that the state's treatment of the survivors has been marked by mismanagement, red tape and a shortage of adequate personnel in the treasury, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss said.

Lindenstrauss called on the state to treat the survivors humanely and equalize their rights. The process of locating and restoring property lost during the Holocaust to its rightful owners was delayed due to both bureaucracy and a lack of cooperation among the various groups holding the properties in Israel, the report says.

In 2006, the treasury's budget department was late in transferring NIS 21.6 million to a foundation for survivors' welfare, eventually transferring the funds only at the end of the fiscal year.

The Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, a central organization aiding needy survivors, could use only about a third of the budget due to the treasury's delay in transferring the funds, while some NIS 14 million remained unused. Thus the organization's activity in providing aid and other essentials to needy or sick survivors was seriously curtailed.

The Finance Ministry's policy also damaged the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel (COHSI), which functions primarily as a planning directorate and maintains contacts with groups in Israel and abroad.

The COHSI is the state's representative for negotiating survivors' compensation. Nonetheless, since 2004 the government has withheld all the funds, thus paralyzing most of its activity.

The comptroller cites Israel's failure to set clear criteria for those eligible to be considered Holocaust survivors and receive compensation and stipends. Over the decades various categories of survivors were formed, entitling members to various levels of assistance in Israel or from Germany. The difference in the stipends allocated the categories reaches hundreds of percent.

The report also cites numerous flaws in handling survivors' requests for rehabilitation, including especially long waiting periods and inefficiency and insensitivity on the part of medical committees setting stipends for the disabled.

The comptroller blasts the state's delay in returning survivors' property that is located in Israel and says the state is far behind Germany and other countries in Europe in this respect.

"This is the first time that the government is examining this issue thoroughly," President Shimon Peres commented, when the comptroller handed him the report's first copy. "The prime minister is determined to stop the injustice done to the survivors and find a satisfactory answer to their distress."

"I have spoken to Olmert and to Noah Flug, chairman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors, and understood that there is progress in finding a solution, and that the negotiations between the sides is expected to be completed in a few days," Peres said.

The COHSI called for an end to the government's continued foot-dragging, callousness and contempt in its treatment of the survivors. The organization urged Olmert and his ministers to implement the comptroller's recommendation and help the survivors, who are elderly and ill, and to do so quickly.

The directors of the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, Dov Arbel and Zeev Factor, said the comptroller's report is yet another proof of Israel's failure, for 60 years, to treat the survivors properly. They called on the government to act immediately to enable the survivors to live their remaining years with minimal dignity.

 

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