2,000 Lithuanian Jews to receive compensation

About 1,000-2,000 Jews who had suffered from the occupation regime in Lithuania will receive symbolic payments, Faina Kukliansky, chairperson of the Vilnius-based Foundation For Good- Will Compensations, said in Vilnius on Friday.

Jews who suffered from the Nazi regime should receive the first payments by the end of this year, she said, after meeting with Gunter Saathoff, director of the Germany Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future organization paying compensations to victims of the Nazis.

The 3 million litas (EUR 870,000) worth of compensations must be paid by 2014.

“Pursuant to the law, we have to do this by the end of 2013, but I hope we will manage much faster. As soon as we have all the data, we will simply divide the sum by the number of people and transfer the money to bank accounts,” Kukliansky told journalists.

Searches for information about potential victims are carried out in international databases, such as that of the Claims Conference, and the materials stored by Lithuania’s Genocide and Resistance Research Center.

In Kukliansky’s words, the foundation has no intentions of checking whether applicants had already received money from other sources.

“We take no interest in this; our criteria are that he was a Jew, lived in Lithuania and suffered from an occupation regime, regardless of the type of occupation regime,” the chairperson said.

“Please note that we do not have too much money for the work. We decided not to spend a single cent from the 3 million litas on administrative needs; therefore, we took a loan,” he noted.

According to the Law on Good Will Compensation for the Real Estate of Jewish Religious Communities adopted by Lithuania’s parliament last year, 128 million litas will have to be transferred to the fund within a decade. The money will be used for religious, cultural, health, sports, educational and research purposes for the Jewish community in Lithuania.