Germany said it would pay more than $1 billion for homecare for aging victims of the holocaust, it was reported.
The Jewish Claims Conference said that the $1.03 billion would be doled out over a four-year period, Reuters reported.
“We are seeing Germany’s continued commitment to fulfill its historic obligation to Nazi victims,” Stuart Eizenstat, the special negotiator for the group, said in a statement.
She added: “This ensures that Holocaust survivors, now in their final years, can be confident that we are endeavoring to help them live in dignity, after their early life was filled with indescribable tragedy and trauma.”
The German finance ministry confirmed that the deal would go through.
“This is all the more impressive since it comes at a time of budget austerity in Germany,” she said.
The former West Germany acknowledged that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust and began paying around $2 billion in compensation to Israel, starting in 1952. When East and West Germany united in the early 1990s, the two agreed to pay more.
“With this new agreement, the Claims Conference will be able to both increase the number of beneficiaries, thus eliminating waiting lists of survivors for homecare, as well as increase the number of hours per person to a minimum level of dignity,” Claims Conference board chairman Julius Berman wrote in a letter, according to the Jewish Daily Forward.