Hundreds of local Holocaust survivors will receive improved social services and home care thanks to a Washington attorney’s milestone negotiations with the German government.
Former ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, the special negotiator for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, led these negotiations in Berlin, securing nearly $1.1 billion for “vital homecare and social services” for elderly Holocaust survivors worldwide.
The Claims Conference, as it’s known informally, negotiates on behalf of Holocaust survivors to support their health and welfare through German taxpayer dollars.
“It’s to get the German government to fund services that allow survivors to age with dignity, to get support for their health and functioning after so many of them suffered unspeakable circumstances, which had long-term health and mental health consequences for many,” said Todd Schenk, CEO of the Jewish Social Service Agency, one of the recipient organizations.
When Eizenstat joined the Claims Conference in 2009, its worldwide budget for Holocaust survivors’ home care was the equivalent of $40 million. That budget is over $1 billion for fiscal year 2026, demonstrating a commitment to Holocaust survivors’ evolving needs, he told Washington Jewish Week.
Through its negotiations, the Claims Conference aims to fund survivors’ compensation programs, including monthly pensions for the most indigent; a welfare program including home care and social programs; and Holocaust education.
German reparations support 211,000 Holocaust survivors worldwide, including about 300 helped by JSSA in the D.C. area who are the “most medically frail and most financially vulnerable,” said Schenk. The vast majority of them are at or near the federal poverty level.
Most of the dollars go toward in-home caregivers to meet some 100,000 survivors’ daily needs and ensure they can remain in their homes rather than relocate to an assisted living facility, which is particularly important for Holocaust survivors.
“The idea of home has been so transient for many of them who lost their homes,” Schenk said.
He said even after World War II, many of the Holocaust survivors who JSSA now serves resided behind the Iron Curtain in the former Soviet Union, without “full liberty and freedom.” They then emigrated to the United States with few possessions and very little money.
“So the idea of preserving their ability to stay home and be safe and maintain independence is really key to preserving their dignity,” Schenk said.
Some of the survivors served by JSSA are either on waitlists for home care and social services — they “meet all the eligibility requirements in terms of disability, in terms of being survivors, but there’s not enough money,” Eizenstat said — or receive home care, but aren’t receiving the number of home care hours they need.
Eizenstat said the $1.1 billion should allow coverage for everyone on the waitlists or with unmet needs.
Schenk said about 98% of survivors JSSA works with are able to “age safely at home and not have to move into hospitals or institutional living settings,” crediting this funding: “We’ve had incredible success in this program.”
As they age, the remaining survivors’ needs are growing greater, and their need for home care will only increase over the coming years.
“Those with us need additional help and [a] higher dollar amount to support their needs,” Schenk said. “Ambassador Eizenstat has been an absolutely unbelievable champion and the key negotiator in these conversations now for decades.”
The German government also agreed to expand a financial assistance program, which provides one-time grants of nearly $1,700 to qualifying survivors through 2028.
The negotiations also resulted in a $3.5 million increase in funding for Holocaust education, for a total of $204 million over the next four years.
“This is a huge breakthrough,” Eizenstat said. “As survivors are passing away at a rate of 6% per year, as the eyewitnesses depart, Holocaust education is crucial,” he added.
This funding covers teacher training, academic research and technological approaches with a “greater potential” to reach broader audiences, including film, social media, gaming and virtual reality, according to a statement by the Claims Conference.
For the first time, the German government will also fund home care for “righteous rescuers,” non-Jewish people who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. They had previously only received monthly pensions, not home care.
Eizenstat, the former U.S. ambassador to the European Union, said Germany’s newly-pledged reparations speak to the country’s commitment to Holocaust survivors even as it faces fiscal pressure and a slowing economy.
“In Germany, there is no Holocaust fatigue, as some say,” he said. “I’m negotiating with young Germans in the finance ministry who weren’t even born during the war, but if they were, they were just infants, and yet they still feel a responsibility.”
Eizenstat leads these negotiations pro bono out of a sense of moral responsibility.
“I was haunted by the notion that we could have done more in the U.S. [during the Holocaust], and that 6 million people never had a chance to live out their lives,” he said. “I just have this passion … to rectify this historic injustice.”
