Boca Survivors to Get More Reparations

As many as 16,000 Holocaust survivors in Boca Raton—the south Florida city where your parents or grandparents probably live—may be eligible for additional pensions from Germany after a German court ruled that applications to receive compensation for slave labor in the ghettos should be “liberalized.” Florida agencies will receive nearly $4.5 million from a German fund this year as a result of the ruling—a whopping 40 percent increase from last year.

I am all in favor of reparations for survivors—especially since, scandalously, one in four American ones lives below the poverty line. That said, I found it interesting that Col. Ellis Robinson (Ret.), a longtime Jewish Boca resident and (if I may say so) truly spectacular grandfather, is not also eligible for some Holocaust-based cash. The colonel was not a survivor of the camps; rather, as an officer who landed at Normandy, freed Paris, fought in the Ardennes, and crossed the Rhine at Remagen under General Patton, he helped free them.

So, I asked the colonel: Why isn’t he getting some cash now for his services?

He responded in an email: “Was glad to do it … FREE OF CHARGE.”

Former Nazi Slave Laborers Seek Payment from Germany [South Florida Sun Sentinel]
16,000 Floridians Get a Shot at Holocaust Pensions [UPI/Vos Iz Neias?]