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Israel's Holocaust 'second generation' sue Germany
Allyn Fisher-Ilan | Jerusalem, Israel
17 July 2007 05:54
Thousands of offspring of Nazi Holocaust survivors in Israel are seeking reparations from Germany to pay for psychiatric treatment they say they require as a result of trauma suffered by their parents.
Baruch Mazor, director of a Tel Aviv-based attorneys' fund behind the campaign, said on Tuesday he had taken the unusual step of filing a lawsuit against Berlin in a Tel Aviv court, in a bid to press Germany to negotiate his group's demands.
The lawsuit was seen as the first ever filed by representatives of the so-called "second generation" or those descended from the survivors of the World War II slayings of six million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Mazor said his group, representing some of the 400 000 Israelis born to survivors, wants Germany to fund twice weekly therapy sessions for three years for up to 20 000 people he says need counselling because of their parents' war-time trauma.
The suit lists no composite sum, Mazor said, but estimated that the psychiatric care in question cost about 600 Israeli shekels a week per person, which could add up to about €300-million in total if all victims claimed the compensation.
Mazor said that thousands of Israelis born to Holocaust survivors "suffer from fears and anxieties because they experience what their parents went through as though it is happening to them".
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