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Germany agrees to compensate hundreds who fled the Nazis as children
By David Rising
Associated Press

BERLIN — Germany has agreed to one-time payments for survivors, primarily Jews, who were evacuated from Nazi Germany as children, many of whom never saw their parents again, the group that negotiates compensation with the German government said Monday. The New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany said the government had agreed to payments of $2,800 to those still alive from among the 10,000 people who fled on the so-called ‘‘Kindertransport.’’

This year is the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the transport of the children to Britain from Nazi Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

About 1,000 survivors are thought to be alive today, with about half living in Britain, and the payment is seen as a ‘‘symbolic recognition of their suffering,’’ claims conference negotiator Greg Schneider said.

‘‘In almost all the cases the parents who remained were killed in concentration camps in the Holocaust and they have tremendous psychological issues,’’ Schneider told The Associated Press.

Following the Nazis’ anti-Jewish pogrom in November 1938 known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, Britian agreed to allow an unspecified number of Jewish children as refugees from Nazi Germany or territories it had annexed. In all, about 10,000 children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland were taken to Britain, about 7,500 of whom were Jewish, according to the museum. About half were placed with foster families, while the others stayed in hostels or farms. In 2019, the conference will distribute approximately $350 million in direct compensation to more than 60,000 survivors in 83 countries, the organization said.

Associated Press