Platz,
W.E., Oberlaender, F.A. (1995): On the Problems of Expert Opinion on
Survivors of the Holocaust in Germany, in: Law and Psychiatry 18, 3:
305-321.

Abstract

On September 10, 1952, the Israeli-West German Treaty on Reparations and Restitutions was signed at Luxembourg's City Hall between the Israeli Foreign Secretary, Moshe Sharett and the first Federal Chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer. The President of the World Jewish Congress and of the Jewish Agency, Nahum Goldmann, signed this treaty on behalf of 23 Jewish organizations. With this treaty, the Federal Republic of Germany undertook to pay three billion deutschmarks in compensation to the victims of Nazi dictatorship. However, these payments did not apply to individual claims made by victims of Nazi persecution.

The authoritative body entrusted with this type of claim was the compensation authority. The legal provisions regulating individual claims furnish the compensation authority with a certain degree of discretion. However, if damage to the individual's health is claimed, payment is made condi­tional on the outcome of a medical examiner's report corroborating this claim. In accordance with the principles laid down by the Federal Court of Justice, ascertaining the facts, also from the medical point of view, as well as their assessment according to legal provisions, is not left to the authoritys sole discretion. On the contrary, the Court of Justice, when taking up the proceedings in question, is obliged to conduct a complete judicial review of the case. The majority of legal proceedings pending in matters of compensation deal with "physical injuries or damage to the individual's health". The Federal Indemnification Llaw (BEG) provides that those persecuted are entitled to claim compensation if they have suffered considerable physical injuries or damage to their health. However, a pension is only granted if their condition implies an irreversible work disability of at least 25 per cent.

An example may illustrate this regulation: If an individual spent at least one year in a concentration camp and if his impairment is of 25% and a result of Nazi persecution, it is, - most generously, - "decided in favor of the individual that his work disability as a result of the persecution he suffered shall amount to 25 per cent". In Germany, unlike in other countries, as for instance Norway or The Netherlands (Dasberg & Kaufmann, 1982; Eitinger, 1962, 1991; Lansen & Sunier, 1983), a person having been persecuted by the Na­zis is compelled to prove any damage to his or her health. Proof solely takes the form of a medical ex­amination conducted by a German physician appointed by the compensa­tion authority concerned. Even in the former G.D.R., which did not enact these indemnification regulations, Holocaust survivors liv­ing in East Germany were granted a pension without having to undergo any medical examinations. Thus, it was not at all surprising that immediately after Germany was reunified, the Federal Government decided to cut the pensions given to survivors in former East Germany, arguing that there had to be equality with respect to their counterparts in the West, instead of increasing the extremely meager pensions which the small group of survivors in West Germany had been receiving. Only after massive protests, particularly due to the dedication and commitment on the part of the late Chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Heinz Galinski, did the Federal Government agree to refrain from cutting these pensions.

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