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Last update - 14:20 19/08/2008
70 years on, children who fled Nazis for U.K. to receive German
pensions
By Ofer Aderet
A historic amendment to British law will now allow hundreds of Jews
who escaped Nazi Germany as children on the eve of World War II to
receive German National Insurance pensions.
"After many years of struggle, we have solved the legal entanglement
that prevented [those who were part of the] Kindertrans****t from
receiving the payments," Herman Hirschberger, 82, of London, who
spearheaded the campaign, told Haaretz last week. "It's a
breakthrough. Justice has prevailed."
Following a Haaretz query, the German government is now checking to
see whether the several hundred Jews who left Germany with the
Kindertrans****t and who now live in Israel will also be eligible for
German pensions.
The Kindertrans****t ("children's trans****t" in German) was a rescue
mission that brought about 10,000 children, most of them Jews, out of
Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to safety in Britain on the
eve of World War II. The children, aged 3 to 17, left their countries,
homes and families and sailed to Britain between December 1938 and
September 1939, where they were received by Jewish organizations.
Britain's Jewish leaders had obtained Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain's consent to take them in, provided they paid for the
refugees' travel and absorption expenses.
Until now, people who left Germany as part of the Kindertrans****t
could not receive full German pensions, because they stopped paying
German National Insurance fees upon arriving in Britain.
The German government offered compensation only for the years spent in
Germany before the escape.
Hirschberger saw this as an injustice, since the children had migrated
to Britain against their will. Had they not been persecuted, they
would have remained in Germany and been eligible today for full
National Insurance pensions.
Following the amendment to British law, some of the National Insurance
fees the Kindertrans****t members paid Britain will be written off
retroactively. Germany agreed to consider this period as one in which
the survivors paid German National Insurance fees - and will increase
their pensions accordingly. The average German pension is four times
greater than the average British pension.
This breakthrough followed a long persistent struggle Hirschberger
launched 15 years ago.
"Most of the time I was alone. Everyone had given up and thought it
was impossible. Even my wife told me it would never happen," he said.
Hirschberger arrived in Britain from Germany in March 1939 at the age
of 13. His parents, who were stuck in Germany, were murdered in
Auschwitz.
"We're doing justice to this group of people, many of whom lost their
families in the Holocaust and survived only because they were brought
to Britain as children," said Mike O'Brien, British Minister of State
for Pension Reform. The legislation is expected to be approved by the
Queen in the next few months. With its enactment, the members of the
Kindertrans****t will join other organized groups, such as former
inmates of forced labor camps, who demanded and received pensions from
Germany for the time they spent in labor camps out of Germany as
well.
An estimated 150 people who came on the Kindertrans****t are still
living in Britain. The government will act to locate them and has set
up a hotline - +44(0)-191-218-7777 - in the Department for Work and
Pension.
"I'll be very surprised if I get anything," said Inge Seden, 78, in
her apartment in Jerusalem last week. "I haven't received anything
from the Germans, except 1,000 pounds because my studies were
interrupted."
Seden left home in Munich at the age of 9 and was brought to a village
in England a few months after her brother and sister. English soon
became her new mother tongue and remains so to this day. Seden is one
of 3,000 Kindertrans****t children who immigrated to Israel after the
war. She applied for German citizen****p a few years ago, but changed
her mind after a visit to Yad Vashem.
Hundreds of the Kindertrans****t children are still alive today, mostly
in old-age homes. And in the wake of the British amendment, they are
now wondering if they, too, might benefit from the increased German
pensions.
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1012844.html
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