Holocaust survivors seek payment from Israeli bank

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5749987&cKey=1115149825000

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Dressed in striped uniforms like those worn by Jews in Nazi death camps, dozens of Holocaust survivors protested outside an Israeli bank on Tuesday demanding compensation for accounts frozen by Britain in World War Two.

A spokesman for Bank Leumi, responding to the protest held in Tel Aviv a day ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day, said it had long ago turned over the money to Israel.

An Israeli parliamentary committee report found in January that about 9,000 people were eligible for $23 million compensation from the Israeli government and $8.5 million from Israeli banks for frozen accounts.

Results of the parliamentary probe into the missing accounts, launched in the late 1990s, had embarrassed the Jewish state. Israel had earlier spearheaded a campaign to press Swiss banks who held Jewish assets before the war to make restitution.

[aneerkoinos]

1. Roma

There are still thousands of Holocaust survivers from concentration camps, that are Roma-people and living in utter destitude.

We are all shamed, Jews also for forgetting their fellow sufferers, the Gypsies, whom we still segregate and oppress.

[Megahurtz]

2. And most people in the States

are never, ever, educated about this.:(

[Senior citizen]

3. Kicking and nominating for greatest.

An Israeli bank and the Israeli government withholding compensation for Holocaust survivors?

A shanda. A disgrace. Up until now I've been avoiding the Palestinian cause, believing that both sides have their faults. But if that bank and the Israeli gov't. don't release those funds WITH INTEREST immediately, I'm taking sides. If that's how we treat our own, then I can see where I have a moral duty to protest how we treat others.