NEW YORK — The North American Jewish federation system is hearing a debate over whether to spend Holocaust restitution on education or on poor survivors, but a resolution seems as distant as ever.
On Monday, the Claims Conference — the main organization in charge of Holocaust reparations spending — and an association of groups called the Holocaust Survivors Foundation took their conflicting views to the United Jewish Communities, the federation system’s umbrella organization.
Both sides stated their claims at UJC’s New York headquarters.
“I think people learned a lot about people’s differences of opinions,” said Rabbi Israel Singer, the Claims Conference president.
Federation officials lauded the session as a first step in their own deliberations on the controversy.
Lorraine Blass, a senior UJC planner who is heading the organization’s Holocaust Survivors Services Committee, called the meeting “the beginning of a process.”
“The committee will continue its deliberations about a very complex set of issues,” she said.
At issue is a Claims Conference policy, dating to 1994, to spend 20 percent of $430 million from the sale of recovered but unclaimed East German Jewish property on Holocaust education, documentation and research.
The rest of the money is spent on survivors.
Since its founding in 1951, the Claims Conference has spent a portion of unclaimed reparations money on educational ventures such as the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. The 1994 policy formalized such moves.
However, in recent years calls have increased for all of the money to go directly to ailing and financially needy survivors.
According to a 2002 report by the Association of Jewish Family and Children’s Agencies, about 40 percent of the 127,000 to 145,000 survivors in the United States lack enough money to pay for home and medical care. Some $30 million is needed annually to help them, the report estimated.
Calls to boost survivor aid intensified after Singer wrote an essay last year calling for a new Jewish organization to use the unspent portion of the $11 billion in overall Holocaust restitution on “the future needs of the Jewish people” in areas such as education, to “rebuild the Jewish soul and spirit.”
Meanwhile, the Holocaust Survivors Foundation lobbied federation leaders, and the Claims Conference met with survivors and federation officials around North America.
At stake is not only the Claims Conference spending but the budgets of federations themselves: Many federations already aid survivors directly or through local social service agencies, which the Claims Conference also assists.
Aside from its member federations’ budgets, the UJC has no authority over Claims Conference policy. Changes can be made only by the Claims Conference’s board of directors, which represents 24 Jewish organizations and holds its annual meeting July 22-23.