35 Spring 2023 has recently been promoted through the intensive historical work of Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), in conjunction with researchers from the Jewish Claims Conference and Israeli historians. In May 2020, a Federal court decision simplified the definition of a ghetto under this law, stipulating once again the compensatory elements of the new legislation and formulating a rather broad interpretation of this term. The legal question at stake was if one should remain with the classical definition of ghettos with all its visual segregators elements, or create a legal definition of ghetto for the purpose of allocating compensations for survivors, thus recognizing similar realities like incarceration in a ghetto as justification for receiving compensation.24 The New Ghetto Workers’ Directive In 2007, a Federal governmental directive came into force. The latter was intended to create a compensation arrangement, as opposed to a social security arrangement, to provide payments to individuals who claimed social security rights under the ZRBG. As discussed above, the idea of a directive was to create a fixed compensation sum – 2,000 Euro per claim. This sought to ensure that, although Holocaust survivors did not have access to social security rights, they would not be denied special symbolic recognition by the Federal government.25 These payments were (and still are) executed by the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues – BADV, a German Finance Ministry body. The latter enabled quick solutions for an existing legal situation via governmental regulations, but allowed the Federal government itself to administer the program. That possibility had been rejected in principle as of 1980 with the establishment of the Hardship Fund. This directive was set as an alternative payment, a sort of compensatory Federal Finance Ministry payment for those who were not able to make a claim under the ZRBG and receive a social security pension for their work in ghettos. However, as of June 2009, in light of the new jurisprudence announced and declared by the Federal Social Court, thousands of survivors were to receive these social security payments. This Federal regulation was not needed anymore, as the road to secure social security pensions due to work in ghettos became clearer, and no new applications under this regulation were to be submitted, as the chances of Holocaust survivors to receive their payments under the ZRBG were much higher. The German Cabinet adopted an amendment to this regulation in 2011, allowing Holocaust survivors to access payments they had not received in the past. The deadline for the original regulation was waived, enabling further recognition of ghettos, and allowing Holocaust survivors to file new claims under this regulation. Conclusion Following the Adenauer speech on the moral responsibility for Nazi wrongdoing, and as part of the accountability for crimes committed by the German people, a special legal discipline was developed in Germany, structuring a legal platform for individual compensations for Nazi wrongdoings. The complexity of repairing the wrongdoings committed by the Nazi Reich under “normal” legal norms created in many cases a clash between procedural law and individual claimants. This often did not allow for sufficient flexibility or sensitivity in processing individual claims for the recognition of collective Nazi wrongdoings and prevented the inclusion of non-administrative fiscal factors into the equation. As illustrated in this article, each legal decision creating compensation laws has advantages and drawbacks. A broader spectrum of rights as foreseen by the BEG created an appropriate individual solution for the claimant. However, since personal compensations are provided by the Federal German government, the later introduction of administrative procedures to create speedy processes of personal payment has its advantages as well, creating a measure of equality among Holocaust survivors. It is noteworthy that the Adenauer declaration of December 1951, regarding the moral obligation of the Federal government for the unthinkable crimes committed in the name of the German people, has been reaffirmed both by the current Chancellor Stoltz and Finance Minister Lindner. They have declared that Germany will always take care of every Holocaust survivor, and will even thereafter continue to be a key player in the battle for Holocaust memory. n Avraham Weber, LL.M., Dr. iur.; Adjunct Lecturer, Phillips Marburg University, Germany; Visiting Scholar, CUNY, Brooklyn College. 24. “Federal Social Court” (May 20, 2020), available at https:// www.bsg.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/Decis ions/2020/2020_05_20_B_13_R_09_19_R_en_sum.pdf?__ blob=publicationFile&v=3 25. Dirk Langner, "Die Wiedergutmachung von NS-Unrecht und die neue Richtlinie zur Ghettoarbeit," GHETTORENTEN, (2010), available at https://www.degruyter.com/ document/doi/10.1524/9783486708325.113/html
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