HARRY KIRS BAUM

Staff Writer

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Holocaust survivors
find it difficult to file and collect
on claims made for restitution.

artin Lowenberg is frus-
trated. The 70 year-old
_
survivor of a Latvian
iconcentration camp, a
man who lost his parents and twin
brothers in Auschwitz, said he has
filed numerous claims with Germany
since restitution payments started, but
has received a small fraction of what
he'says he is due.
"I have filed claims, gone through
different channels, and even written to
Germany myself, and I've just hit
against a stone wall," he said.
His story is common, according to
government and Jewish agency offi-
cials who have been
helping survivors press
their claims.
The German govern-
ment began providing
monetary restitution 46
years ago, but many
claimants have had trou-
ble collecting. People
who assist survivors in
.filing claims say the
forms are confusing,
many survivors don't
know their rights, and
the German government
bureaucracy slows down
the process.
Lowenberg, who
permanently injured
his leg loading ships
during 92-hour shifts
in Kaiserwald, a
Latvian concentration
camp, has become

Clockwise from top: Martin Lowenberg, Lola
Kwasniewski, Paula Marks-Bolton and Ester
Mon CZ7lik

8/21
1998

8 Detroit Jewish News

familiar with the bureaucratic twists
and turns.
Over the years he has filed repeated
claims for health benefits, German
Social Security, and family property
and money lost to Germany. The only
payment he receives is the lifetime
pension, paid monthly from the
German government. In 1967,
Lowenberg got his first monthly pay-
ment of $39. Since then, inflation an
the deutsch mark exchange rate have
increased the amount he receives to
$400, but it's still-the minimum
amount of 25 percent paid to individ-
uals for physical damages.
Until heart bypass surgery forced
him to retire in 1986, he had worked
for 24 years as a salesman of industrial
textiles, working on commission. He
gets no pension, but does collect
Social Security payments.
Since 1992, he has filed numerous
times for an increase in benefits from
Germany because of deteriorating
health, but has always been denied.
"They say I make too much money,"
Lowenberg said.
Filling out the forms brings back
bad memories, he said, and he tells his
story in words filled with anger
towards the German government,
which, he said, has spent years pro-
crastinating.
Lowenberg is also frustrated by
unfulfilled,promises by agencies dedi-
cated to getting compensation for sur-
vivors.
He remembers a meeting last year
at Congregation Shaarey Zedek with
the Conference on Material Claims
Against Germany where he was told to
expect an increase after July 1997. It
didn't materialize.
Paula Marks-Bolton tells a similar
tale.
The 72-year-old West Bloomfield
resident spent her childhood in the
Lodz Ghetto and was sent to
Auschwitz and other camps before her
liberation from Bergen-Belsen in
1945. Her parents died in 1939, when
she was 13.
She gets a monthly pension from
the German government but has
unsuccessfully filed claims for three
years to raise the amount
She has also applied for funds
recently made available to survivors
forced into the Lodz ghetto.
"Most of us are not young any-
more, we are dying out. In 20 years,
no one will be left," Bolton said angri-
ly. "They can never repay for what
they have done. They keep asking you
for more information and you think

