Sixty years after West Germany agreed to the first compensation payments to Holocaust victims, 80,000 now-elderly Jewish victims of Nazism living in the former Soviet Union will receive payments for the first time since WWII World War II.

July 9, 2012, Washington, D.C. – In historic breakthroughs during negotiations with the German government, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) attained a number of landmark changes to compensation payments for Holocaust victims, announced Claims Conference Chairman Julius Berman. The changes include:

• First-ever payments to 80,000 Jewish victims of Nazism living primarily in the former Soviet Union from the Hardship Fund, with applications available November 1, 2012. The Fund issues one-time payments of €2,556 and until now was not available to most residents of the former Soviet bloc.
• Equalization of all Claims Conference pensions to €300 as of January 1, 2013, a long-sought goal of the Claims Conference.
• A reduction of the time period from 12 months to 6 months that Holocaust victims had to have lived in hiding or under false identity under Nazi occupation in order to be eligible for Claims Conference pensions, as of January 1, 2013.

The Fund will be open for applications from these newly eligible victims starting on November 1, 2012. Information is available in Russian, English, Hebrew and German at claimscon.org.