3,000 Holocaust survivors approved for compensation
About 3,000 people have been cleared to receive the first payouts from an Austrian fund set up to compensate survivors of the Holocaust, and another 3,000 should be approved shortly.
Hannah Lessing, general secretary of the General Settlement Fund, told the Austria Press Agency the fund hoped to have processed all of the 19,300 survivors who had applied by the end of 2006, though she conceded that some cases were very complicated.
Only 6,000 applications were filed within Austria, Lessing said; all the rest came from abroad.
Austria created the €175m fund in 2001 to compensate those stripped of businesses, property, bank accounts and insurance policies under the Third Reich.
