France, US sign deal to compensate Holocaust deportees

Washington, Dec 9 (IANS/EFE) France has signed an agreement with the US under which it will compensate Nazi Holocaust survivors who are Americans or others and were deported from France.

The agreement was signed Monday and will come into effect following approval by the French parliament, according to the US Department of State which defined the terms of the deal last week.

According to the agreement, $60 million from France will be used by the US to create a fund to compensate those Holocaust survivors, their spouses and children who seek compensation and fulfil the requirements.

The agreement aims to pay those people who were deported from France to Nazi concentration camps through the French rail company SNCF during the country's occupation by the Germans between 1940 and 1944.

In order to gain the benefits of the deal, the person should not have had access to any compensation or pension programmes which France has been providing since 1946.

The US will be the only country to distribute the funds to those who fulfil three requirements.

First, Holocaust deportees will be compensated, provided that they are not French, Belgian, Polish, British or from former Czechoslovakia as those countries already have similar accords with France.

According to the US Department of State, the eligible survivors will receive over $100,000.

Secondly, spouses of the deportees who were not nationals of the mentioned countries, will be compensated.

Thirdly, children of survivors who died after World War II could claim the compensation in their names, but only if they can prove that the deportee parent was not from these countries.

The amount of money to children and spouses will depend on the year the survivor died.

According to estimates, 76,000 Jews were deported from France by the SNCF during the country's occupation.

The SNCF is not a part of the recent agreement, but it has committed to make a voluntary contribution of $4 million in the coming years to museums, monuments and education programmes focusing on the Holocaust in several countries, according to The Washington Post.

--IANS/EFE

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