Auschwitz survivors poorly treated

For the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the "Arbeit macht frei" sign is a copy. Stolen last December, the original has to be restored, as does the whole camp. "The 190 hectares complex, which was opened as a museum in 1947, is in a state of decay," reports the Frankfurter Rundschau. Over 200 million euros will have to be invested in the next 20 years. The International Auschwitz Committee has suggested that EU partners participate with Poland, where the camp is located. "Berlin has paid 60 million euros," notes the daily paper. Süddeutsche Zeitung headlines that there is a "sad [human] toll on commemoration day." Almost half of the 517,000 Jewish survivors still alive are living beneath the poverty line, "most of whom are now in Israel and the former Soviet Union." Banned at the time from formal education and traumatised by the camps, few of them have managed to build a professional career to make a proper living. "An issue that was hardly brought up when compensation payments were made by the young Federal German Republic," writes the SZ. Germany paid 65 billion euros to various states and annually negotiates aid with the Jewish Claims Conference.