World: Europe
Swiss holocaust fund closes
A fund set up in Switzerland to help needy victims of the holocaust has reached its deadline for applications.
Officials say that about ten percent of the one-hundred-eighty million dollars in the fund has yet to be spent.
Almost three-hundred thousand Jewish holocaust survivors and their families have received payments.
Further payments have gone to Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and other groups persecuted by Nazi Germany.
The fund was started two years ago following growing criticism of neutral Switzerlands wartime role in the laundering of assets confiscated from persecuted minorities. The fund is separate from a 1.25 billion dollar payment that big Swiss banks have proposed to settle lawsuits brought by Holocaust victims.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
___________________
now this may seem trivial...but the ~victims~...the actual victims of these crimes........ .do they get the money?..........or does the publishing company........