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Germany agrees to record $1.4 billion in annual Holocaust reparations as survivors age
(JTA) – Conditions didn’t seem favorable in early May as Stuart Eizenstat entered annual negotiations with the German government over reparations for the estimated 240,000 remaining Holocaust survivors around the world.
Eizenstat had served as the special negotiator for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany since 2009, and had analyzed the country’s economic and political landscape: high inflation, spiraling fuel costs and unprecedented government spending on defense to support Ukraine in its war with Russia. Add to that a German finance minister, Christian Lindner, who was elected less than two years on a platform of budget cuts, fiscal restraint and smaller government.
“We’re dealing with German taxpayer money. That has to be accounted for. And we’ve been in an era in the last couple of years and particularly this year with negative factors that would seem to have an inauspicious impact,” Eizenstat said in an interview.
Yet the compensation package Eizenstat helped secure for the Claims Conference — more than $1.4 billion — was the largest monetary figure agreed to for a single year since German reparations began more than seven decades ago. The figure reflected a recognition that, even as the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles with each passing year, the needs of the remaining survivors are increasing as they age.
Some of the $1.4 billion that Germany agreed to spend will be paid directly to survivors; the bulk will fund social welfare services such as home care and food packages, administered through about 300 agencies across 83 countries. Germany also agreed to boost funding for Holocaust education programs.
“This is perhaps the most productive session we’ve ever had,” Eizenstat said. “And the fact that it has occurred almost 80 years after the war is a testimony to the Claims Conference’s relentless pursuit of justice and the partnership that we’ve had with the German government.”
Total direct compensation to survivors is expected to reach $535 million next year, mostly paid out in pensions to survivors. In addition, negotiations resulted in four more years of hardship payments — direct allocations to survivors who have not qualified for pensions —which were introduced following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. More than 128,000 survivors can expect to receive 1,250 euros each, or about $1,360, in 2024, an amount that will go up by 50 euros each year through 2027.
The hardship payments were negotiated on top of the regular Holocaust survivor pensions, and they primarily benefit Jews from the former Soviet Union who were not interned in camps or placed into ghettos and were therefore not included in the pension program. These Jews survived Nazi mobile killing units that murdered more than 1 million Jews, including entire communities, and today are more likely to experience poverty.
Another category of aid has skyrocketed over the past two decades: social services. German spending in this category will reach about $890 million in 2024, an increase of $105 million over last year. Fifteen years ago, the total was less than $50 million.
In 2023, 120,000 survivors received home care, medical transportation and other forms of support through Jewish social service agencies.
“Survivors are getting more frail, and they are needing more hours of care, and more assistance,” said Reuben Rotman, president and CEO of the Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies.
The agencies represented by Rotman’s group keep track not only of the services they have provided to survivors but also of unmet needs. So if a survivor needed 20 hours of care but received only 12 due to funding constraints, the gap would register in data collected by the Claims Conference.
“The Claims Conference goes back to Germany each year and aggregates all the unmet needs for all the organizations that are funding and makes the case for increases. And generally, they’ve been successful in those negotiations,” Rotman said.
Germany also agreed to continue increasing funding for Holocaust education around the world, providing the Claims Conference with about $150 million for educational programs over the next four years. The money is meant to counter findings from recent surveys showing that the public is growing less knowledgeable about the Holocaust as it recedes further into the past.
According to a 2018 survey commissioned by the Claims Conference, nearly half of American adults could not name a single concentration camp and almost a third were under the impression that the number of Jewish victims was far lower than the 6 million who were murdered.
The Claims Conference’s education budget helped pay, for example, for the production of “Son of Saul,” a 2015 Hungarian film set in the Auschwitz concentration camp that won an Oscar for best foreign film.
Exposure to survivors and education about the Holocaust deserve credit for the successful outcome of this year’s negotiations, according to Eizenstat. He noted that in the leadup to the formal meetings, chief German negotiator Luise Hölscher was taken on a tour of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem; Polin, a Jewish history museum in Warsaw; and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
“I took Luise for three hours before the negotiation and introduced her to three of our survivors who are docents at the Holocaust Memorial Museum,” Eizenstat said. “It really gave her a historical sense of the Holocaust, but also how much these funds mean to the dignity of survivors.”
Later this year, the Claims Conference will release what it says is the most comprehensive demographic report on survivors ever, detailing where they live, broken down by country and city.
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Iran appoints AMIA bombing suspect to National Security Council
(JTA) —
For the second time this year, Iran has named a wanted suspect in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires to a top security role.
A spokesman for the Islamic Republic’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said Monday that Mohsen Rezaei had resigned as an adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, and would assume the role of secretary of Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council. Rezaei is a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Rezaei is wanted by Argentina and is subject to an Interpol Red Notice issued at Argentina’s request over his alleged role in the 1994 attack, which killed 85 people and remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history.
Earlier this year, Ahmad Vahidi, another suspect in the AMIA case and also the subject of an Interpol Red Notice, was appointed IRGC commander.
In a landmark ruling in 2024, an Argentine court held Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, responsible for the bombing, setting the stage for international legal action.
In June 2025, Argentina’s federal judiciary ordered that 10 Iranian and Lebanese suspects accused in connection with the deadly 1994 AMIA bombing be tried in absentia. Rezaei and Vahidi are among them.
The eight other suspects accused by the late AMIA special prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, are: former Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahijan, former Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, former Iranian ambassador Hadi Soleimanpour, former Iranian cultural attache in Buenos Aires Mohsen Rabbani and former Iranian diplomat Ahmad Reza Asghari, as well as suspected Hezbollah operatives Salman Raouf Salman, Abdallah Salman and Hussein Mounir Mouzannar.
The post Iran appoints AMIA bombing suspect to National Security Council appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel and AIPAC on the ballot in the Minnesota Senate and U.S. House races
(JTA) — A pair of Democratic primaries in Minnesota on Tuesday are among a string of high-profile battles between progressive and moderate candidates, where Israel and the pro-Israel lobby serve as key wedge issues.
The state’s highest-profile race is the U.S. Senate primary between Rep. Angie Craig, who has been endorsed by the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, and Lieutenant Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who says she would reject AIPAC’s money and accuses Israel of committing a genocide.
The most recent data gathered in late July through early August has Craig with a 2-percentage point lead, within the 5.3% margin of error. Another poll, conducted in late July by a group supporting Flanagan, shows her with a 14-point lead. The Democratic nominee, whether it be Flanagan or Craig, is expected to win the general election in November.
The race, and the candidates’ sparring over AIPAC, comes as the lobby and Israel under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have become increasingly unpopular among Democratic voters. Israel is also an issue in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in neighboring Wisconsin taking place on Tuesday.
Flanagan has referred to Craig as “AIPAC’s candidate” in the Senate race, which prompted Craig to distance herself from the group’s spending during a TV debate in June.
“AIPAC has not contributed at all, the PAC, to my Senate campaign,” said Craig, whose wife, Cheryl Greene, is Jewish. “Not one penny.”
Flanagan countered that, while AIPAC itself has not donated to Craig’s campaign, it has held fundraisers for the four-term congresswoman. AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment.
Just last week in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, progressive Abdul El-Sayed defeated the moderate Rep. Haley Stevens, whose AIPAC endorsement was the frequent target of opposition attacks.
Flanagan has drawn the support of American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian super PAC that aims to counter AIPAC. The group spent about $54,000 on ads boosting her candidacy, according to FEC filings.
Flanagan’s platform includes blocking offensive weapons sales to Israel — a position that all but seven Senate Democrats voted for in April — and advancing a two-state solution that “allows for a secure Israel and Palestinian self-determination.”
Craig, who also backs a two-state outcome, voted against the recent amendment proposed by Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie that would have halted $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel.
In a statement explaining her vote, Craig panned Netanyahu and the war in Iran, but wrote that the amendment would endanger Israelis and American troops and allies in the region. After the vote, Flanagan wrote, “A vote to send $3.3 billion of taxpayer money to fund additional weapons of war to Benjamin Netanyahu is unconscionable. Enough.”
Craig has the endorsement of a number of Democrats in Congress and the Senate, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. She is also endorsed by lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel, former Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg, and Minneapolis’ Jewish mayor, Jacob Frey, who rose to national prominence for his response to the deadly results of the deployment of immigrant enforcement officials in his city.
Flanagan has drawn endorsements from a swath of major progressive figures including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and outspoken pro-Palestinian Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Flanagan is also endorsed by the state’s Democratic Party affiliate, the Democratic Farmer Labor Party.
On Sunday Sanders posted on X,”There is a reason why the super PACs and billionaires are flooding Minnesota with $20 million to defeat Peggy Flanagan. Same thing as Michigan. They do not want somebody in the Senate who will stand up for the working class.”
Spending by political action committees affiliated with AIPAC has also come to the fore in the Democratic primary race for the House seat that Craig is vacating.
The most moderate of the three leading candidates is State Sen. Matt Klein, who has expressed support for the U.S.-Israel relationship and is endorsed by DMFI. Last-minute spending by outside groups has sparked accusations that AIPAC is indirectly involved.
“AIPAC is coming after me,” said former Lakeville mayor Matt Little, one of Klein’s opponents, in a video.
Klein’s two opponents — Little and state Rep. Kaela Berg — both accuse Israel of committing a genocide, and have both speculated that AIPAC is behind some of the Klein spending.
Berg supports placing conditions on U.S. aid to Israel and halting weapons sales, and Little says the U.S. must end all military aid and weapons sales to the country. On the policy page of his campaign website, Little refers to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack as “an act of wanton slaughter against innocent civilians” and says that people should condemn “the anti-Semitism that followed.”
Berg is listed as “primary approved” by the liberal Jewish Middle East advocacy group J Street, while Little has been boosted by American Priorities, which has spent about $64,000 in his favor. He is also endorsed by the DFL and Congressional Progressive Caucus leader Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
The latest polling in the district — conducted at the end of May by a group that favors Klein — found Little leading Klein with a 7-percentage point lead, and Berg trailing by another 3 points. 39 percent of voters were undecided, and Little and Klein were about even after voters received more information about the three candidates.
Craig has declined to endorse any of the candidates to replace her.
The post Israel and AIPAC on the ballot in the Minnesota Senate and U.S. House races appeared first on The Forward.
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Sister of pro-Israel stalwart Lindsey Graham wins runoff slot
(JTA) — South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham and a second Republican candidate will advance to a special primary runoff in two weeks, when voters will decide which GOP candidate might take the vacant seat of her late brother Lindsey Graham.
Just over an hour after polls closed, at about 8:15 pm, the Associated Press declared that Darline Graham would advance to a runoff election, noting that “one additional candidate will also advance.” At that point Graham had secured 32.6% of the vote, with 39% of ballots counted.
Graham was up against nine fellow Republicans, with her biggest competition including U.S. House Reps. Ralph Norman and Russell Fry, who were closely vying for the second spot in the runoff at the time of the AP’s call. In South Carolina, the top contender would have needed to win a majority of votes in order to avoid the two-candidate runoff, scheduled for August 25.
In the November general election, the winner will face Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who is unlikely to prevail in this solidly Republican state.
Tuesday’s race marked the second time in two months that GOP voters came to the polls to select a Senate candidate, and now they will need to do so a third time. Longstanding Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top ally of Israel in the U.S. Senate and supporter of military action against Iran. won the original primary in June but died suddenly from an aortic dissection on July 11.
Graham, who was 71 years old, served 23 years in the Senate and eight in the U.S. House. He was a member of the Senate’s Armed Services and Budget committees and had traveled to Israel about a dozen times since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Heading into Tuesday’s primary, analysts expressed no doubt that the winner would be pro-Israel. They stressed, however, that matching Graham’s level of foreign policy experience and focus on Israel, a place he often visited, would be a formidable task.
“Whoever wins this is going to be an ally of Israel,” Christopher Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in the lead-up to the race. “The question is whether they will be the champion for Israel that Lindsey Graham was.”
A few days after Graham’s death, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, appointed Darline Graham to complete the late senator’s term. Despite having minimal policy experience, such as a past role on the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, she earned President Trump’s support and soon declared her candidacy in the full race.
While 10 candidates were running in the Tuesday primary, only about two others were considered serious competition for Graham, Norman and Fry: businessman Mark Lynch and Mark Sanford, whose governorship was plagued with scandals and who briefly ran against Trump in the 2020 presidential primaries.
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