Germany will pay more than $1.4 billion next year to survivors of Nazi atrocities

In this 2020 photo, survivors walk below a gate with the inscription "Work sets you free" after a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial site of the former German Nazi death camp Auschwitz during ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of the camp's liberation in Oswiecim, Poland.

Janek Skarzynski / Janek Skarzynski

The German government will pay more than $1.4 billion next year to Holocaust survivors, in the latest compensation for atrocities and persecution inflicted by the Nazis.

Nearly $890 million will go toward home care services — an increasingly vital aspect of the reparation effort, as the Nazis’ victims advance in age, nearly 80 years after the Holocaust ended.

The payments stem from annual negotiations between Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, an organization representing Jewish Holocaust survivors also known as the Claims Conference. The funds are meant to help survivors live in dignity, decades after they were persecuted and lost loved ones and property.