Last update - 00:00 21/08/2007
PMO slams Labor MK for saying Anne Frank wouldn't get aid
By Haaretz Service
Officials at the Prime Minister's Office on Tuesday criticized MK Ophir Pines Paz (Labor) for saying that if Anne Frank had survived the Holocaust, remained hidden and was never taken to the concentration camp, she would not be eligible for financial aid from the Israeli government.
Pines-Paz made the statement at a special Knesset debate Monday on the issue of financial aid for Holocaust survivors.
The Prime Minister's Office issued an official statement saying that Pines-Paz had disrespected Anne Frank's memory to "satisfy his own political needs."
Pines-Paz's comment refers to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's refusal to grant monetary stipends to those survivors who had managed to escape Nazi-controlled areas and were not subjected to the camps or ghettos during the Holocaust. In a meeting with representatives of the Holocaust survivors' groups on Sunday, Olmert agreed to provide the "first circle" survivors (those who did endure the camps) a NIS 1,200 monthly stipend, but the issue of the "second circle" survivors remained unresolved.
MK Collette Avital, who has been at the forefront of the battle for the survivors' rights, supported Pines-Paz saying that though there is no doubt Frank would have received compensation from Holland, "she would have gotten nothing from Israel, because she was not in the ghettos or the camps."
The PMO officials tried to justify their harsh response saying that this is a special case and that "it is our responsibility to step in and prevent the public discourse from becoming embarrassing and beast-like." Pines Paz's comment is baseless, the statement said, and shows that he is not familiar with the arrangements reached on the payment of reparations to survivors, and that he is not familiar with Anne Frank's biography.
Anne Frank, who has become one of the most prominent symbols of the Holocaust, lived in hiding in the attic of an apartment in Amsterdam for some two years, in a Nazi-controlled area. After her hiding place was compromised, Anne and her family were taken to Auschwitz, and later, in October 1944, to Bergen-Belsen where Anne Frank was killed in March 1945.
According to the PMO, if Anne Frank had survived the Holocaust, she would have received aid in one of three different ways: through Israeli law which granted compensation to survivors who came to the country up until 1953, or through the German government who paid reparations to survivors who came to Israel after 1953, or through an arrangement reached between Jews and Germans in the 1990s.
Olmert's bureau issued a response saying "it appears that MK Ophir Pines-Paz's desire to attack the government has made him cross new lines, yet unknown in the Israeli political system."