Germany pays compensation to eastern European holocaust survivors

Germany has reached agreement with the New York-based Jewish Claims Conference on establishing a fund to compensate Jews in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, who were victims of the Nazis during the Second World War.

Under the agreement, Germany will pay a total of about one-hundred-and-twenty million dollars into the fund over a period of four years.

The Claims Conference will then distribute the money - in the form of monthly payments - to around eighteen-thousand holocaust survivors, who must have received no previous compensation from Germany in order to qualify.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service