For decades Mrs Lea Stern (91) received a small supplement to her German pension, small compensation for her horrific experiences in a Nazi concentration camp which left her mentally disabled. Last week, however, the state of Lower Saxony asked for the money back.
The state social services are demanding that the Holocaust survivor pay back DM93,000 (£37,000) because she never declared the US social security pension that she had received since 1977.
"The debit of the illegally made payments will occur because of budgetary principles on the necessity for economic viability and thriftiness," the agency said in a letter to her last week.
Ms Stern was born in Poland, emigrated to the United States after the second World War and now lives in Israel. Her lawyer, Mr Michael Witti, contends that her mental disability made it impossible for her to realise that she had failed to declare her past income. He has appealed to the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, to intervene in the matter.
Compensation for Nazi-era forced labourers came closer yesterday when a US court struck out 50 lawsuits filed by private individuals seeking compensation. The verdict will open the way for payments from the compensation fund agreed between the German federal government and industry.
A German court yesterday convicted four teenage skinheads of attempted murder and arson for injuring a family of asylum-seekers from Kosovo in a firebomb attack on their refugee hostel. The defendants, aged between 15 and 18 and linked to the far-right scene in the western town of Ludwigshafen where the attack took place in July, were sentenced to terms of between 2 1/2 and five years in a juvenile prison.
