Auschwitz concentration camp
Photo: Ophir Hacohen
2nd generation survivors to sue Germany
Fisher Fund to file class action lawsuit against German government next week, following failed talks to reach compensation agreement for some 40,000 second-generation Holocaust survivors, who 'have suffered severe mental and psychological damage'
A class action lawsuit representing 40,000 second-generation Holocaust survivors will be filed against the German government at the Tel Aviv Magistrates Court next week, following failed attempts to reach a settlement with Germany.
The suit will be filed by Attorney Gideon Fisher, founder of the Fisher Fund, an independent body which grants scholarships and assists in places where other organizations are unable to help.
First Report
Reuven Weiss
Children of survivors plan to file class action against German government, demanding that it recognize traumas caused by childhood in shadow of Holocaust
After receiving many requests from second-generation survivors, Fisher, whose own parents were Holocaust survivors, began holding talks with senior German officials in a bid to receive financing for mental treatments required by some second-generation Holocaust survivors.
"We were not interested in filing a lawsuit," explained Baruch Mazor, CEO of the Fisher Fund on Thursday.
"I personally held talks with an official German source, who is very aware of the subject of the Holocaust, and admitted to me that there was a real problem among the second generation."
Despite talks with officials, the German government cut ties with the Fisher Fund some two months ago and refused to comment on the matter, forcing the Fund to take legal action.
The lawsuit, which was formed after collecting testimonies and data, including professional psychiatric opinions, does not specify the sum of compensations demanded, but leaves it to the court's judgment.
"The second generation grew up in families where clear deprivation of joy reigned in many areas of life. Living in the shadow of depression, grief, and parents' sense of guilt, has created a strong affinity to pain and loss among these children," the suit reads.
"All their lives, second-generation Holocaust survivors have directly and indirectly experienced all the horrific, disastrous experiences of doom and destruction, which were engraved in their parents' minds and souls during the Holocaust.
"The distorted connection developed between members of the second generation and their parents has definitely delayed their independent development and even caused them, in retrospect, to experience significant regression in their relations with other people, as well as severe mental and psychological damage."
Compensation to go to those in need
Speaking of Germany, the suit says, "As part of its proven and undeniable intention to destroy the Jewish people, the defendant even planned to harm the second generation of the survivors of the Jewish people, knowing that if the final solution did not succeed in full, the emotional damage in the second generation would be so serious and significant that it would damage the Jewish race for good and completely destroy it.
"These intentional acts have caused, and continue to cause the plaintiffs difficult psychological and emotional damage and they should be compensated for that."
A professional psychiatric opinion by Professor Shmuel Pfennig will be filed along with the lawsuit.
"Most clinical research shows a greater frequency of emotional disorders among second-generation survivors. Nineteen out of the 20 studies which were carried out among clinical populations showed an excessive frequency of psychiatric symptoms among this population," Pfennig's opinion reads.
"Even among those second-generation children who do not show signs of psychiatric psychopathology, emotional problems can be found as a result of growing up in a home over which the Holocaust trauma hovered."
Sources from the fund said they hoped the court would comply with their request to recognize the suit as a class action suit and stressed that "any monetary compensation received would not go directly to the pockets of the second-generation survivors, but would be meant only for the funding of mental treatment for those in need, some of which are no longer able to function".
