East Germany - Owning Up For The Holocaust:

• Share

Ever since its creation as a separate nation in 1949, East Germany has refused to pay reparations to survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. Unlike West Germany, which has dispensed some $43 billion in compensation to Israel and to Jews around the world, East Germany has argued that it had no responsibility for crimes committed under Hitler's Third Reich. Last week, after nine months of negotiations with the World Jewish Congress in New York City, East Germany agreed to pay $100 million to Holocaust survivors "in need of material assistance."

Erich Honecker, General Secretary of East Germany's Communist Party, also announced that his government would rebuild the Oranienburgerstrass e Synagogue, prewar Berlin's largest Jewish house of worship, which was ravaged by Nazi mobs during the Kristallnacht violence of 1938. The East German leader cautioned that his country might have to dole out the money in installments, since it lacked the hard currency to pay survivors all at once.