March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Holocaust victims say $5.2 billion `too late’

PORTLAND — Julia Skalina, who lost 35 family members including her parents in the Holocaust, says nothing can compensate for the crimes committed by the Nazis during the World War II.

“Listen, they cannot pay for what we went through,” Skalina said. “How do I feel about it? It’s too late. It’s really too late.”

Still, Skalina is one of 16 Maine residents who have applied for compensation from a $5.2 billion fund set up by the German government.

The money is being paid as compensation for forced and slave labor, seized property and unpaid insurance. The fund was set up after a year of negotiations with survivor groups and is intended as a final settlement for all remaining claims against Germany for crimes and abuses during the Nazi era.

Kurt Messerschmidt and his wife, Sonja, of Portland both survived several camps in Germany and would be eligible for the funds, but they refuse to apply.

“Just like at the end of the war, we don’t want anything from the German government,” he said. “What we lost cannot be repaid in a monetary settlement of any kind.”

Most of the 20 survivors now living in Maine will accept the money, which some see as a symbol of Germany’s acceptance of responsibility, even if woefully inadequate compensation for their losses.

To become eligible, Skalina and the others had to fill out a five-page application form with numbered boxes for listing the times, dates and locations of their suffering.

Skalina was 14 in 1939 when the persecution of Jews began in her village in southern Slovakia. Her father was killed in the ghetto in which all Jews were forced to live.

In 1944, Skalina and her mother were deported to Auschwitz. Nine weeks after her mother perished in a gas chamber, Skalina was sent to a munitions factory where she performed slave labor for nearly a year.

There are an estimated 240,000 slave workers still alive, about half of whom are Jewish. Estimates of the number of forced laborers range from 700,000 to 1.5 million, although some lawyers say the total may be 2.3 million.

Neither Skalina nor other applicants know how much will finally be paid to individual survivors, although they agree it can never be enough.


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