Simon Wiesenthal Center: Dutch Have Moral Obligation To Pay Full Pensions To Holocaust Survivors and Their Children Who Emigrated To Israel—Wherever They Live

May 11, 2015

The Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the Dutch government’s decision to publish new policy directives on pension payments made to Dutch Jews who emigrated to Israel and who currently live beyond the pre-1967 borders. The issue first came to light after a 90 year-old survivor saw her pension check cut when she moved to a community over the so-called '1967 Green Line'.

“Let’s be clear—The Netherlands has a moral obligation to pay full pensions to aging Holocaust survivors and their children who emigrated to the Jewish State—wherever they may live today,” declared Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights NGO, who is in Jerusalem for the opening of the Global Forum on Anti-Semitism.

“It is beneath contempt, that as the world commemorates the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany and its collaborators and enablers that The Netherlands would choose to politicize the pensions of people whose families were destroyed by the Nazis during the Second World War. Unlike other European nations who were occupied by Nazi Germany, Dutch authorities have refused to apologize for failing to protect their Jewish citizens during WWII. Instead of drafting new bureaucratic rules to punish Jews living over the Green Line, the Dutch should issue a belated apology for their failure to protect their Jewish neighbors from the Nazi Genocide,” Cooper added.

“The bottom line is that what postal code Holocaust survivors and their offspring choose to live in should have no bearing on getting funds that are rightfully theirs and that so many have come to rely on to sustain them in a dignified manner,” Rabbi Cooper concluded.

For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036,  join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).